Fighting for Life
by narrazione
Summary: *Sequel to Learning to Live* After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, the wizarding world is thrown into chaos. Melbecka Harper and the Weasley twins are right in the middle of the chaos - working with the Order of the Phoenix, running a joke shop, and trying to figure out life and love in the middle of war. Set in HBP, George/OC, Fred/Angelina
1. Reunited

**Normally, my author notes are going to be at the end of my chapters, but chapter one is the exception! So, here goes (sorry, there's a lot to say here!). First off, if you have not read **_**Learning to Live**_**, GO READ IT! This story won't make sense without it, being a sequel and all. Second, I need to apologize to all my readers for taking so dang long to get this posted! I hurt my wrist playing flag football, and it hurt like a beast to type. Then, I went on a long vacation. It still may be a bit between postswhile I fully recover and catch up. **

**And, of course, the disclaimer. I do not own, claim to own, or have any affiliation with Harry Potter. I'm just a fan writing a story. Melbecka is my creation; I just inserted her in a world of JK Rowling's genius creation. I'm not making any money off of this, believe me. Okay, all that's done. Thanks so much for all your patience, and I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The day Angelina Johnson first set foot in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was typical day only in the lives of those close to the Weasley twins. When the front door opened, Fred and George expected nothing more than another customer, and Fred snapped his fingers at me and pointed towards the door as if I was going to leap into action. Like maybe the bubbling cauldron beside me could just be left unattended. So, I grabbed George's arm as he whizzed past the counter and attempted to redirect him towards the door, but he immediately started whimpering like a wet kitten and did not stop until I let him go. With a stern look from me, he decided it was best to deal with things himself.

"We're closed," George told whoever just came in. "Sorry. Come back tomorrow!" And he ducked behind a shelf to clean up the last spill of the day, a collapse of Extendable Ears.

"Fred, this is ridiculous!" I snapped as the closest Weasley twin counted the money in the till. "We need more help!"

"We're working on it," Fred rolled his eyes. "Georgie said he was going to interview people."

I rolled my eyes skyward. "George told _you_ to interview people, Fred."

"Oh." Fred looked up briefly from the pile of sickles. "Right. 'Spose he did. Well!" And he said nothing more.

I growled in frustration and threw a fistful of porcupine quills into my cauldron. Don't get me wrong; I loved the twins fiercely, but they could get on my nerves like no one else. "We need another register open during the day."

"You do it," Fred snapped. "I'm already on one and George is on the floor!" With that, he swept all of the sickles to the side and started counting all over again from one. Oops.

"I would if I wasn't so busy trying to restock things. I can't just walk away from the cauldron; your brews are so_ complicated_, Fred. One stir too few, and instead of turning your hair blue, the prank butterbeer will burn it off. And that's a bit less reversible, isn't it?"

Fred muttered something under his breath as he made a careful pile of seventeen sickles. "Well, fine! Be all important, if you must! Is that person still in the store?"

"Probably," I shrugged. That was really the least of my worries. "Did you lock the door when we closed?"

"I locked it," George supplied, sinking onto the stool next to me.

"Yeah, so did I," Fred nodded. "Because I know you two." He pointed between George and I, so my boyfriend and I exchanged a confused look over what exactly he thought he knew. "I know that Mel's the responsible one that locks the door, then George remembers all of a sudden to go and lock it, which actually _unlocks _the door, so I went over and relocked it." He smiled proudly and pushed another pile of sickles to the side.

George and I shared another look, this one much more knowledgeable. "Fred," I started patiently, "I sat right beside you all day, didn't I?" Fred nodded. "So, you know that I haven't left this stool since lunch, right?" He nodded again. "So, when exactly do you think I locked the door?"

Fred cocked his head to the side, considering this. "I s'pose you didn't."

I pressed my lips together firmly in an attempt to hold back my laughter. When I was sure I had control, I pressed on. "So, thinking the door was unlocked, you locked it. But, since the door was actually locked, by locking the door, you actually…"

"…unlocked it," George finished.

"Merlin," Fred groaned, dropping his head onto the desk. "I hate you both."

"We didn't do anything, Freddie!" George laughed. Fred and I joined in because, really, it was all quite ridiculous.

Our laughter mingled with a lighter trill that had yet to sound in 93 Diagon Alley, and all of our heads snapped towards the tone. Yes, the customer in the store. We had forgotten about her. Again. But, it was no customer standing in front of the counter laughing at our stupidity.

It was Angelina Johnson.

"OH ROWENA, IT'S ANGIE DAY!" I screeched, most unladylike. How could we forget? Angelina and I had been planning her visit for weeks, ever since my early departure from Hogwarts. She had to immediately return home after school to drop off her things and go on the annual Johnson family vacation, this year to Scotland. After that, though, she swore to spend a week with us. And, in true Weasley fashion, we completely forgot until the late-June day actually arrived.

Although, honestly, how could we remember? With the state of things, a visit from Angie was the last thing on our minds. After the Daily Prophet reported on Voldemort's appearance in the Ministry building (smoothing over much of the other details regarding the events of the Department of Mysteries), the wizarding world began preparing for war. We were still in the opening stages, though; minor skirmishes. I hesitated to say that we were _at _war. It was coming, certainly, but we were not there yet. The pieces were still falling into place, and the Order did not like how they were falling. The giants and the dementors had sided with Voldemort; the dementors were expected and not such a great loss with how hard they were to control, but the giants had been quite a blow. And muggles were being killed. Because why would he leave them out of it?

But those were matters for another day. The Order could wait just a few hours!

The smile immediately vanished from Fred's face, replaced by a scarlet blush and diverted eyes. I, however, leapt from my seat to throw my arms around my dear friend. Angie caught me around the waist and squeezed back as hard as she could; it had been far too long since the last time we saw each other. Growing up, Angelina Johnson and I were inseparable, the best of friends, practically sisters. The past month, therefore, had been absolute misery for us. When I left Hogwarts early, unable to cope with school after being involved with the battle in the Department of Mysteries, we had very limited contact. Yes, we wrote plenty of letters, but that was nothing considering that we had seen each other practically every day our entire lives. From being neighbors to being classmates, we were always together. A month apart was ridiculous for us to comprehend.

"Oh, I missed you!" she exclaimed into my hair. Then, she let me go and held my shoulders at arm's length to look me up and down. "Merlin, what the hell are you wearing?"

I grimaced. Of course she noticed the hideously unflattering magenta robes I had to wear. I shot George a look, but he seemed completely unfazed by my glower. "Shop uniform. I got outvoted when we picked them out."

Angie winced. "That's bad luck. How are you?"

This was more than just an inquiry into my physical state. Mentally, I had had been haunted after the Department of Mysteries. Walking through the halls of school just reminded me of all the things I failed at. I could not protect Ron. I could not heal Ginny's broken ankle. I could not save Sirius. With Fred and George gone, I felt completely alone, even with Angie and Lee and Alicia and Katie and Roger Davies and Cho and the rest of my Ravenclaw quidditch teammates. None of them seemed to really understand. Even Luna, Neville, Ginny, and Harry Potter's Trio of Perfection could not understand.

Not that I wanted them to, really.

So, when Angie asked how I was, she was asking about quite a lot, and she truly wanted to know. "Better. Not normal, but better."

"Good," she nodded. "That's good. We'll get you back to normal. Well," she wrinkled her nose as Fred and George began slapping each other for reasons unknown, "back to _your_ normal." With that, she slapped me on the arm and grinned widely. "Now, show me where I'm sleeping, unless you want that trunk sitting in your shop all week!"

Once Angie settled in, I set about making dinner to quell all of our rumbling stomachs; cooking, it turned out, was not nearly as difficult or dangerous as my mother always made it seem. The boys, however, were far too distracted to find fish and chips worth dragging themselves away from the shop for, so Angie and I set up at the counter to watch the men work as we caught up. Which was, really, fine by us. They could use the work, and we could use time away from them. Not that we didn't secretly plan to spend the entire week avoiding them for "girl time", but still.

Angie smiled to herself as she popped a chip in her mouth, eyes travelling over the store during a lull in our conversation. I grinned mischievously, knowing that look too well. Time for a little sisterly teasing.

"So, Angie." She turned towards me. "What's got you grinning ear to ear?"

"What? Oh," she shook her head, "nothing. Just looking at all you've done with the place."

"Mmm-hmmm. Sure. Look at the belief on my face."

"Oh," she tore off a bit of fish and flicked it at my face. I dodged and let it hit the floor. "You're impossible."

"Yet charming," I reminded her. "Now, seriously. What's going on? You know I won't let up. Is it a certain charming yet irritating ginger friend of ours?"

Angie opened her mouth to protest, but her grin gave it away. "You're impossible," she giggled. "All right, maybe I'm a bit happy to see that impossible boy over there." She motioned to the twin closest to us, who was busy restocking the WonderWitch display.

"That one? You're happy to see that one?"

"Mel, really," Angie rolled her eyes, "don't make this more painful than it already is. You know I'm happy to see Fred. I'm always happy to see Fred. We're not going through this again."

"No," I shook my head, "we're not. It's just that, well, that's not Fred. That's George."

She frowned at me, then squinted at the back of George/Fred's head, then frowned at me again. "What potion did you snort? Of course that's Fred. He's got the…" She waved her hand over her head rapidly.

"No," I corrected sternly. "It's George. Don't you see the…" Also at a loss for words, I smacked my forearms and shoulders.

"It's Fred."

"It's George."

"Fred."

"George."

"_Fred_."

"_George_."

Angie rolled her eyes. "Right, there's only one way to settle this. OY, GINGER!" He turned around, eyes wide with confusion, and Angie swore. "Turn around, George, never mind." George looked at my smug face for an explanation, but I gestured for him to return to work. So, he did with no question.

"You can't have my boyfriend, Angie. I know he's quite a catch, but I'm not big on sharing. Lucky for you, he has this twin brother that I think you'll find just as charmingly exasperating."

Angie rolled her eyes but laughed at her mistake. "Oh, shove it up your arse, Mel," she giggled. "Like you can always tell them apart."

"I'm in love with one of them," I pointed out. "I _can_. You can, too. You're just out of practice."


	2. A Perfectly Ruined Day

I never could quite figure out if my owl had poor maneuverability in the air or just loved to fly straight at my face. Either way, Wooster had a habit of hitting me in the head with letters, the thicker the better, and the third day of Angie's visit was no different. She and I sat outside of Florean Fortesque's Ice Cream Parlour, cones in hand, feet slipped out of our shoes so as to avoid embarrassing tan lines, when a thunk to the head sent my nose straight into my butter pecan.

"_Really_?" I snapped as Wooster landed on the table between us. Angie giggled as I wiped melting ice cream off of my nose, and Wooster used my distraction to pull out a pecan to munch on. "Stop that!" I scolded. "Those are mine."

"He thinks other-_wah_!" Angie jumped as a similar letter, thick and officially sealed, landed on her lap by an owl that swooped past us and down the lane. "What just happened?"

"Wooster, stop!" I scolded, pulling my cone away as my owl reached for another nut. "I'll get you a treat later, okay?" Wooster hooted and, I swear, scowled at me...if owls can have facial expressions. "Was that your owl?" I asked Angie.

"No," she shook her head. "Looked like one of the post office's."

"Probably busy. Can't dawdle with you. Although, if there were actually berries in that strawberry cone of yours, maybe he would've made an exception." Angie grinned, and I retrieved the letter Wooster attacked me with. "Right, so what's this?" As I began to read the carefully written script addressing the letter to _Melbecka Harper, 93 Diagon Alley, _Angie let out an odd choked gasp-squeal that made several passerby's look our way.

"N.E.W.T.s."

"What?" I frowned.

"These are our N.E.W.T. results."

"_What_?"

"These are our-"

"Oh, shut your gob, Angie, I got it!" I snapped. I shoved my ice cream cone at her, which she took solely because she was too stunned by the gesture to do anything else, and I ripped open the letter. "Don't let me fail," I muttered to Rowena Ravenclaw, who was probably much too busy with much more desperate pleas from my fellow former 'Claws to listen closely to me.

"Hey! This tastes good."

"Don't eat my ice cream," I ordered, but it occurred to me faintly that I had completely lost any desire for frozen dairy products as my brain momentarily forgot the English language and saw every letter on the page as something completely foreign. Once all synapses were properly realigned, though, I squealed.

Honestly.

Right there in the middle of Diagon Alley.

Angie wrinkled her nose. "What's the damage?"

"I got an A in Magical Creatures," I moaned. My world had ended. An A. An freaking A. _An A? _I was a Ravenclaw, curse it! I should do better! Who was the last Ravenclaw to get an _Acceptable_?

"Dearest, you got shot in the arm by an Erkling's dart. What exactly did you expect?"

"What did _you_ get?"

"I haven't opened mine yet. My hands are a bit full. What'd you get for freezing your administrator?"

"I hate you," I grumbled. "All the brilliant things I did, and all you can remember _an O?"_

"Go fuck yourself!" Angie swore, sitting straight up in her chair. "You froze your administrator! How the hell did you get an O in Herbology? Professor Sprout winces every time she sees you!"

"No, not in that," I corrected quickly. "I got an E there. I got an O in Potions, Angie!"

"Oh. Shocking." She rolled her eyes and sunk back in her seat, but then she sat bolt upright. "You got 'Exceeds Expectations' for freezing your administrator, but an A for getting shot in the arm with a blooming dart?"

Although her words barely registered in my mind as I poured over my results, I muttered an answer back. "I imagine my written exam pulled the Herbology up. I'm good at the theory, not the practice. I'm shit at all parts of Magical Creatures."

"Fair enough," Angie sighed, taking a bite out of her ice cream. Once she swallowed that, she took a bite out of mine. "I s'pose the rest were O's as well?"

"No," I sighed, sinking back into my chair. "I got an E in Transfiguration. Not exactly my strongest showing."

"Can't be as bad as freezing your examiner and getting shot in the arm by –"

Before she could finish the thought, I waved my hand to cast a silent spell that sent my ice cream into her face. "Oh yeah," I added smugly, "I got an O in Charms. Imagine that." She muttered under her breath. "By the way, you can finish my cone if you want."

"I'll kill you."

"Got an O in Ancient Runes, too."

She wiped ice cream off her face, still muttering death threats, as a trash bin floated by, so I waved our ice cream into the trash to free her hands. She licked the last of my snack off of her hands before opening up her own grades, which she studied carefully.

"Well," she stated finally. "I beat you in Herbology."

We continued comparing scores, which were fairly even actually, until it occurred to us that we could shove our results in the boys' faces since they never took their tests. So, we headed back to 93 Diagon Alley proudly, ready to flaunt our stunning N.E.W.T showing.

It was a bit of a letdown to find only Fred standing around. Or, rather, sitting around. Even though we kept the shop closed on Mondays, since we needed on day a week to restock and Monday was our slowest day for whatever reason, we still expected both boys to be hard at work.

Fred sat on the counter with a large stack of parchment on one side of him. He picked a sheet off of the top, studied it, and either crumpled it up and threw it on the floor or added it to the significantly smaller stack to his other side.

"Going through applicants?" Angie asked. Without looking up, he nodded. Then, he added the latest potential worker to the stack. The next sheet was barely in his hand three seconds before joining countless others on the floor. "That many people want to work here?"

"Mostly admirers from our Hogwarts days," he mumbled, studying the next cv carefully. "Kids with big dreams, little experience, and no spelling skills." He threw this on the floor, too. "I swear, Angie, it'd make everything easier if you'd just stay and do all this."

"All right."

"Cool. Wait…" He looked up and frowned. "What …I didn't mean…wait…What just happened?"

"You just asked her to move in with us," I explained, feeling a grin grow across my face. "And she said yes. MERLIN, ANGIE, YOU SAID YES AND YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE WITH US!"

"I DID!" she yelped back. As all young females are biologically programmed to do, we grabbed hands and jumped up and down excitedly, squealing incoherently at a register that seemed to cause Fred quite a bit of pain.

Fred grabbed the next application off the stack, did not even bother to look at it, balled it up, and chucked it at my face.

Like that could stop our excitement.

No, something else did.

The sky darkened as if a storm suddenly rolled in, which made the three of us stop and turn towards the windows. Fred stood up and made his way towards the glass to see what exactly was going on, but before he could get to the windows, the very ground beneath us gave a great shudder. We all threw our hands out to the side to keep our balance, and thankfully everything seemed to stabilize. But then it was all far too quiet. Diagon Alley was never silent. Not even in the dead of night when everyone was supposed to be asleep, because Diagon Alley never slept. But now, right now in the early afternoon, as we all froze with shock at the Dark Mark in the sky, it was perfectly quiet. If someone were to drop a dragon claw at the far end of the street, everyone would hear. Everyone in town was so quiet, so still, that even the rustling leaves of the trees as a gentle summer breeze blew outside could be heard in our closed shop.

But then, the world gave another sigh, sending jars and phials crashing to the floor, and Diagon Alley erupted in chaos. People started screaming and shouting as everyone scattered for cover. Shop doors flew open and closed as people ran from the small band of Death Eaters making their way down the street. The small group sent a few spells this way and that, hitting buildings and filling the air with the _whoosh_ of flying spells and the unmistakable sound of splintering wood. This was our worst nightmare.

Diagon Alley was under attack.

A year ago, this would have terrified me to the point that I probably would have found a cupboard, curled up in a tight ball, and sobbed uncontrollably until someone dragged me out to either kill me or take me to St. Mungo's for psychiatric care. Not anymore. Now, with my home in danger, I pulled out my wand in case they came through our door and turned towards a very pale Fred.

"Where's George?"

"U-upstairs. He's, erm, he's…asleep?"

"Rowena," I muttered. He literally could sleep through an attack. "Wake him up for me." I needed help, and Fred clearly did not have it together. It should be me losing it right now, but our roles had changed in the past few months. I was the one in the Department of Mysteries. I had seen battle, not the Weasley twins.

After all, I was Melbecka Harper. I knew Death. I recognized its face. The stars spoke of me and all that. This was, apparently, what I did. I apparated up and down the floors in the shop because the spiral staircase of 93 Diagon Alley sometimes gave me nightmares, but facing an attack of Death Eaters hardened me. Maybe it was because I knew exactly what I needed to do. I had done this before.

Fred came back downstairs with a half-awake George, whose hair stuck up on one side. He finished pulling on what was clearly the first shirt he found on the floor, which happened to be mine. Although, I think when Mrs. Johnson bought it for me that she knew in her heart the pastel pink color and the cuddly teddy bear design really suited George much better. Had circumstances been different, I would have laughed. Instead, I ignored the fact that my shirt was probably stretching beyond repair, grabbed George's wand off of the sales counter and shoved it in his hand.

"Why wasn't this on you?"

"Sorry," he mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Grabbed Fred's by mistake."

"Git," Fred supplied, wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt. George pointed his wand threateningly at his brother but made his way to the window to survey the chaos.

"What do we do?" he asked me. Me. As if I was the expert.

Although, in this room, I was.

"Fred, take Angelina to Grimmauld and get the Order," I directed. I wanted Fred out of the way; his nerves were getting the best of him today. Fred nodded and held his hand out for her to take, but Angie flinched her hand away.

"Get _who_?" she demanded.

"Fred, the Floo," George ordered as he grabbed the door. "They're going into Florean's; we have to move _now_."

"You can't go on your own!" Angie insisted.

"We won't be on our own," I told her, "if you _go and get the Order_."

"Who the hell is the Order?" she snapped back at me.

Before I could hex my best friend, a move I would surely regret later, Fred grabbed her wrist, threw a fistful of Floo Powder in the fireplace, and dragged her in with him. With them gone, George turned to me. "Are you ready?"

"No," I shook my head. "Let's go."

George followed me, no questions asked. Actually, that is a lie. Just outside the door, George grabbed my arm to ask, "What am I wearing?" I just patted his arm and assured him off-handedly that the color brought out his eyes.

We were too late for Florean Fortesque. By the time George and I got there, hexing a Death Eater in the process and earning myself a singed pant leg, two Death Eaters were dragging out the kindly owner of the ice cream parlour that Angie and I were sitting in front of not even ten minutes ago. I sent a jinx their way and managed to hit one of them, but the other retaliated with a burst of yellow light. George grabbed me and yanked me to the ground, the spell flying over our heads to hit our store and shatter the window with a loud hiss. Florean's store had clearly been ransacked, and the man had been caught unawares so his wand was not with him. By the time George and I scrambled back on our feet, we were no more able to protect him then he was because the Death Eater dragged him into the crowd. The other recovered from my spell and sent a cruciatus at us. I shoved George out of the way; having been hit by a cruciatus curse myself just a couple months ago, the last thing I wanted was for him to go through that. The spell missed us, but it cost us valuable time.

Another group had simultaneously gone into Scribbulus Writing Instruments and ransacked the place, although Soloman Scribbulus was visiting family in Denmark that week and thankfully was not there.

As George and I recovered from dodging the cruciatus curse, Fred, Angie, Remus, Tonks, and Alastor came bursting out of Weasley Wizard Wheezes. But it didn't matter. At that moment, the Death Eaters came out of Ollivander's with the wand maker himself and stacks upon stacks of wands. We all sent spells flying towards them, but they disapparated before our hexes and curses and jinxes were anywhere near them.

At the time, we had no idea where they went. It was only later that we found out they sent the Millennium Bridge into the Thames, killing Muggles in the process. It was a minor skirmish, one that did not even last half an hour, but it was a huge blow. Now, the Death Eaters were armed, a staple of the wizarding world's freedom was destroyed, and innocent Muggles were killed.

We lost.

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**Thanks to everyone who has read so far, and extra special thanks to nikkixcore for the review! As a heads up, I do use some *ahem* harsh language in this story. Not too much, but some; hence the rating. Also, this is set during book 6 right now, and will progress into book 7. So, the content gets dark. This is wartime. That's how JK wrote it, and that's what I'm trying to follow (although I know I do so loosely). So, posts will probably be like this one – one part light, two parts heavy. I'll do what I can to keep it fun, but there's only so much I can do!**


	3. Emmeline and Amelia

Since the attack, Diagon Alley was a changed place. Shop windows used to glitter with eye-catching merchandise; it was hard to know where to look because of all the magnificent things. There were books and herbs and new brooms and cauldrons and toys and sculptures and all sorts of goodies. People sat outside with the paper and an ice cream cone, taking in the sunlight. Children ran up and down, laughing and playing, many running kites behind them shaped like dragons or phoenixes or mermaids.

Not anymore. Now, every window had a massive, somber Ministry poster plastered over it. The posters displayed security advice, telling us the best ways to protect ourselves should Diagon Alley come under attack; as if a poster could prepare us for Voldemort showing up. Others showed pictures of known Death Eaters. The one on our store, which we carefully placed on the door so as not to ruin the shop windows, displayed Bellatrix Lestrange to everyone. We felt that her face was the most important one to know, even though Fenrir Greyback was apparently the one leading the group the day of the attack.

Rebuilding would take time, though. While the signs seemed to go up overnight, shop repairs would take longer. Florean Fortesque had no living relatives, so we took it upon ourselves to clean up the ice cream parlour for him. The day after the attack, we put the remaining ice cream tubs outside for people to help themselves, and the few people around came out to help us.

There were no shoppers in Diagon Alley that day, although it was swarming with Ministry officials, so only the actual residents milled about. It was strange to all of us for our world to be so broken and empty. Even though the sun shone brightly and the birds sang overhead, we could all still feel the Dark Mark hanging above us. The day was beautiful and light, but the air was as heavy as our hearts.

George nailed a board in place over the doorway to the parlour, sweating in the summer heat. Angie grabbed another plank and held it in place for Fred to hammer over the window, and I offered a bowl of ice cream to Remus.

"Who cleared up Ollivanders?" he asked, taking the last of the salted caramel ice cream from me.

"Don't know," I shrugged, rushing over to help George get another board in place. "When we got out here this morning, it was already boarded up. I think maybe his son came by. Scribbulus is on his way back from Denmark, so we're leaving his place be."

"How's your shop?"

George wiped sweat from his brow and tossed his hammer down. "Remind me again why we aren't doing this with magic?" he grumbled, grabbing a cup to scoop some plain vanilla ice cream into it.

"Because magic did this to us, so we have to fix it another way. Everyone is doing this the muggle way," I reminded him, gesturing to the street around us. And it was true. Up and down Diagon Alley, people just like us were sweating in the afternoon sun to repair damage to their stores and help their neighbors clean up. More and more posters appeared, too.

"Right," George sighed. He offered me a spoonful of ice cream, and I wrapped my mouth around the spoon instead of taking it from him with my hand. "Anyway, our store's all right. Window's fixed; _that_ we used magic for. Other than that, we didn't really have any damage."

"How's, em…" Remus nodded towards Angie, who laughed at something Fred muttered when he yet again missed the nail with his hammer.

I shrugged. "She's confused. She wants explanations about the Order and the attack, but she's been uncharacteristically patient about it all. Right now, she's focused on getting our home fixed up."

"She'll want answers soon, though," George warned.

Remus nodded. "Well, you'll have to give her some, then, won't you?"

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG

Life never returned to normal, but it fell into a surreal pattern that felt almost right. Almost. Slowly, very slowly, customers began coming back to the shops. Business picked up for everyone, but ours really boomed. People needed a laugh now more than ever, and it almost became possible to forget about the attack. Then, we would look outside at Florean's, or someone would talk about Hogwarts and remember that the new students had no one to get a wand from, and it sank in again.

Live moved on though, as life is apt to do – Fred and Angie partook in some harmless verbal sparring (also known as their version of flirting), she and I gossiped like old busybodies, the four of us ran the shop together like we'd been doing it our whole lives – until the murders. They were killed within three days of each other, Emmeline Vance on Monday evening and Amelia Bones early Thursday morning.

The four of us sat in the shop, just buttering our morning toast and letting our tea brew, when word arrived in the form of Kingsley Shacklebolt apparating right into the middle of the room. Everybody jumped at the sight, Angie's teacup shattering to the floor. It had to be a serious matter for him to make such a risky public appearance; normally, one of the Weasleys brought us news so as not to attract suspicion. Even Fleur stopped in now that she and Bill were engaged, a thought that still made the boys shudder a bit. Personally, I found the girl charming, albeit a bit dense. On the rare occasion that someone else stopped by, the wandered in during shop hours like a typical customer. Tonks had developed the taste for Canary Creams from just such occasions.

"What happened?" I asked, setting my toast down carefully to avoid putting it in spilled tea. Angie fervently mopped up her mess, but the rest of us could not have cared less.

"Amelia Bones has been killed."

Angie squeaked and dropped her tea again, but Fred reached out and found her hand with his to steady her. George would have done the same with me, but my hands were otherwise occupied as I ran them through my hair. Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Dead. First Emmeline, one of us, an Order member, a brilliant witch, killed. That news came to us from Arthur Weasley late at night, long after Angie was asleep, so we could mourn without her knowing – at least until the Prophet published the story the next morning and we could justifiably be shocked at the brutal killing. Now this. Now an innocent woman.

"Why?" George asked as if reading my mind.

Kingsley shook his head. "We don't know yet. Your father is looking around inside too see what he could find." We all knew that 'inside' meant 'inside the ministry when he went to work'; well, all of us but Angie, rather. "But, we have not had time to figure it out yet."

"Was she working with us?" I asked.

Angie must have regained some of her senses, because she pulled her hand from Fred's grasp and asked "Working with _who_?"

"No," Kingsley shook his head, "she was not. She was not…like Emmeline."

Emmeline Vance's death was still too new to be mentioned casually, and my stomach knotted at her name. Even though I had not personally worked with her, I knew her, and I knew her well. We'd shared several meals together at Grimmauld, discussed strategies, speculated on Voldemort's next move, planned how best to protect Harry over this critical summer now that Sirius was gone. She was part of Harry's advanced guard, or she had been, at least. She swore to give her life protecting him if need be. And she actually had. Even though Fred, George, and I said we knew joining the Order may mean our deaths, it never seemed real to us until Emmeline. Her death made the risks a reality, not just a constant argument with Mrs. Weasley.

"Was it…" Fred stopped to swallow quickly and regain his composure, also shaken by the mention of Emmeline Vance. "Was it quick?"

The second of hesitation between when Kingsley opened his mouth to speak and when he actually spoke was all we needed, but he gave us the courtesy of answering anyway. "…No."

"But…" I shook my head. It didn't make sense. "Why kill her? Either they killed her to achieve some goal, in which case there was no need to draw it out, or they killed her because she was dangerous, in which case we would have known." I noticed the confused, and irritated, look Angie gave at my 'we' comment, but she stayed silent. "It doesn't make sense."

Kingsley shook his head. "It doesn't make sense _to us_. They do not operate under the same principles that we do." George rubbed my arm gently as I shook my head. He was right, of course. Why would I expect Voldemort to act honorably? "I must go. I…am sorry I only stopped in to bring bad news."

"No," Fred sighed solemnly and shook his head to show we appreciated being told. "Cheers, mate." Kingsley nodded once and apparated from the room.

A long moment of silence stretched between the four of us as Fred, George, and I took in the news. Two brutal murders in less than a week. I pushed my toast away, no longer feeling like eating. In fact, I rather felt like throwing up, but there was thankfully nothing in my stomach yet.

Angie, however, had waited long enough. Yes, she could be patient while we heard this devastating news, but to expect her to let everything slide was far too much to ask. Finally, the dam burst, and she slapped a hand on the solid wood of the countertop, making us all jump. "Would _somebody_ tell me what the hell you were going on about? What was all this 'we' and 'us' and 'working together' and all that?"

I should have explained it. She was my best friend, my 'sister', but I couldn't. I could not explain the Order and what we were doing, not with two violent deaths weighing so heavily on my heart. Thankfully, Fred took it upon himself to tell all of this to Angie as George wrapped me in a hug. With my head pressed safely to George's chest, Fred's words sounded muffled and far away. So, I did not focus at all on the explanation, just on the steady beating of George's heart.

George's voice filled my ears, though, ruining my safe haven as the explanation time came to an end. "It's a big commitment," he said. I pulled away and straightened my hair. "Being part of the Order means that things like this could happen at any time to the people you care about the most. Could happen to you. And joining was probably the hardest thing we ever did."

"Mum was dead-set against it," Fred agreed. "But, now that we're in, and since you're not in school anymore…"

"I don't want to join," Angie interrupted. The boys looked at her with wide eyes, as if this thought never crossed their minds, but it seemed obvious to me. Of course she would not want to join for all of the reasons that Mrs. Weasley used when she tried to keep us out. This was a painful, dangerous job. We signed up for it because, frankly, we were idiots. Angie was not. "I was here for the attack. I've seen what you people have to do, and I don't want to be part of that."

"You don't have to," I told her like she needed my permission. "We just wanted you to know what was going on."

"Thanks." She smiled softly, but it faded as she thought. "So, erm, if you're doing all those things, fighting Death Eaters and the likes…"

"Only when we run into them," Fred corrected quickly. "We don't go out looking for them!"

"Right, I got that." Angie rolled her eyes. "There's a chance, then, that you might run into…Sirius Black?"

For a very long, awkward moment, the three of us stared blankly at Angie as her question processed. Angie, bless her, stared right back, probably assuming that it never occurred to us that we may have to battle who she thought was the second most dangerous wizard in England. The Daily Prophet had reported, albeit briefly, on what occurred in the Department of Mysteries. The article, however, focused more on the appearance of Voldemort in the Ministry building than anything else. As there was no body, Sirius's death had not even been mentioned. Perhaps the reporter did not even know about it.

I licked my lips slowly, and Fred elbowed George sharply in the stomach when my twin started to laugh, thankfully cutting him off right after no more than a breathy titter. "Ri-ight," I started slowly. "About that. Erm…even though you're not a member of the Order…if you're going to stay with us…you should probably…" I turned to Fred for his confirmation on this, as if I needed his permission first. Thankfully, he did more than that and took up the gauntlet of talking.

"Before we were part of the Order, we knew a lot about it. Members, hideout, all sorts. That was mostly because our mum and dad were in it, but still. Ron and Harry and Hermione all found out, too, and I see no reason why Granger needed in on it other than because Harry and Ron would've told her anyway. And if you're going to stay with us, it's safe to assume that we'd tell you things. So, maybe, if you're willing, we should give you that same information."

Angie's eyes widened and shifted between the three of us, looking for some sort of explanation as to why her Sirius Black question brought this on. We offered none, though, so she gave a defeated sigh. "Fine," she consented. "Let's do this."

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG

"FUCK YOUR MOTHER, THAT IS SIRIUS BLACK WITH HARRY POTTER!"

"Did she just say…" George started, pointing to the doorway to 12 Grimmauld Place's kitchen where Angelina Johnson was desperately trying to get away.

Fred lunged for her and grabbed her arms before Angie took her fervent cries into the hall, where she would awaken that portrait and set all hell loose in the house. "Angie. Angie. Ang! Calm down."

"That'll work," Remus mumbled into his mug before taking a sip of tea and turning the page of the Daily Prophet. "Mel, have you read today's paper? There's a new column with some recipe for a…" he leaned towards the paper and squinted, "…some kind of potion."

"Little busy, Remus," I grunted, snatching the photograph that Angie unceremoniously flung like a hot coal. "Thanks, though."

"Angie, ANGIE!" Fred bellowed, and she momentarily froze at how loud he got. "Godric, woman! He was on our side!"

"He is _not_ on your side, Fred! He's a mass murderer that escaped from Azkaban to-"

Fred pressed two fingers to her lips, and this move was just unexpected enough to silence her. She went cross-eyed trying to look down at his hand, then turned a glare on his face.

"Was," I corrected, and Angie snapped her head around to look at me with wide eyes; Fred's fingers quickly found her lips again, just in case. She searched my face and then George's, taking in the weight suddenly filling the room. "Sirius Black is dead."

"None of that Death Eater bullshit is true, Ang. If you promise to stay calm and _quiet_, we'll go into the living room, and I'll explain it to you. All right?" Angie nodded slowly. "_Promise_." She nodded again, so Fred slowly removed his fingers from her lips. True to her word, Angie stayed completely silent, and Fred led her from the kitchen.

"Well!" George grinned chipperly. "That went smashingly!"

"How did Fred never tell her about Sirius before?" I asked as I pulled a chair next to Remus. Now that the excitement had died down, that potion _did_ sound rather interesting.

George shrugged. "Dunno. I told you so you wouldn't lose your mind with worry…not that you do that. You never worry. About anything. Ever." He grinned sheepishly at the look I shot him. "I guess…it probably just never occurred to him."

"Well, things better start occurring to him, or it's going to get really ugly around here," I mumbled.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Melbecka," Remus yawned, picking up his teacup again. "I found that highly entertaining."

* * *

**So, as I've been writing further along in the story, I realized that this chapter and the next are a bit dull. I can try to make the next a bit more fun, but there wasn't much I could do about this one. It just wasn't coming to me. Filler posts just aren't as exciting, but I'll do what I can! Thank you all SO MUCH for reading and reviewing. I love hearing what you have to say (good and bad!), and it's great to know people are reading!**

**_Next Chapter (I did this last story but forgot the past few chapters, sorry!): The Lies We Tell_**


	4. The Lies We Tell

"Think they'll be done before supper?" George yawned, cocking his head towards the living room. It was nearly three weeks later that we found ourselves back at Grimmauld for "family dinner". Angelina was still not all that keen on the place, finding it about as creepy as I did but feeling much less need to be polite about it. While she now understood things like the Department of Mysteries and Sirius, she still had very little desire to sit around a table with Mad Eye Moody and Remus Lupin and act as if there was nothing at all strange about it. I could hardly blame her, really. I wasn't really sure how these people became my friends, but waging war together does that. She had hardly fought a battle and seen these people burst through the door as reinforcements; until that happened, it was unlikely she would really get it.

So, when we arrived, Fred pulled her aside to calm her down and prepare her for just how normal dinner really would be. In her head, this was all going to be some big tactical discussion when, in reality, Mrs. Weasley would forbid anything Voldemort-related while Ron, Harry, and Hermione were within earshot. Fred and Angelina still had not emerged. I shrugged and filled in a word on the Daily Prophet's crossword. Remus frowned and double-checked my answer, as if he possibly knew anything about ancient rune translations. Silently admitting his defeat, he shrugged as if agreeing that my answer was right. Please.

"Doubt it," Tonks yawned. I shook my head in agreement. "But I can go check on my way out."

"No, I'll do it," George said. "Thanks, though. Where are you off to?"

"We're getting Kingsley set up with the muggle…prime minister?" She looked to me for confirmation, and I nodded that she had the term right. "Prime Minister for protection. With…well, with the attacks lately happening so close to him," the attacks being Emmaline and Amelia, of course, "we figured a bit of extra protection wouldn't hurt. We just don't want him to know he's got a bit of our help. You know how touchy that lot gets about a bit of magic. So, we're getting him hired as an aide."

"Good luck," Remus called after her.

No sooner had Tonks and George left than Harry entered. I snatched George's tankard, which thankfully had butterbeer in it rather than water. I would have preferred firewhiskey at that point, but I took what I could get. Truth be told, I did not particularly look forward to family dinners, either. All the subtle questions about marriage and grandchildren, grilling from Mr. Weasley about muggle technology, Harry getting pissy because no one was bringing everything down by discussing mass murders, Hermione spewing off her O.W.L scores like someone actually gives a damn. Loads of fun, this lot. Loads of fun.

"How're you doing, Harry?" I asked chipperly. In my head, he was going to yell at me. Or grunt something bitter. Or demand answers to some question I didn't even know he had. This was, after all, the moodiest boy alive. Whatever power above decided that the one to save the world from the darkest of all evils would be a teenage boy clearly had a sick sense of humor or a lacking knowledge of hormones.

Then again, Harry Potter always managed to surprise me. "Fine," he yawned, peering into a pot to see what Mrs. Weasley had stewing for dinner. "So, Bill and Fleur are engaged, huh?"

"Right?" I laughed. "Who would have thought? It surprised all of us."

"Feels like it came out of nowhere."

"It did," I confirmed. "I didn't even know they spoke outside of Order meetings, but then they show up one day and announce that they're getting married. You should've seen Mrs. Weasley's face."

"It's so strange," he yawned. "How people pop back into your life. I thought she'd just be a girl I shared the Triwizard competition with, but here she is, fighting with us. I never would have thought."

"I thought it was going to be Fleur," I mumbled into my tankard. Harry frowned at me, so I elaborated. "That died in the Triwizard. I figured, y'know…well, I Knew it wouldn't be you," he opened his mouth, probably to question why exactly I knew that, but I plowed on before he could, "and between the legal three competitors, we had a frightening Bulgarian Quidditch star, the golden boy of Hogwarts who I personally knew to be one of the brightest wizards of our time, aaaaand…a French girl. She seemed so…bubble-brained to me, you know? It seemed to me that, if someone was going to die in the Tournament, it would be her."

"It's true, then?" Harry asked evenly. "You really knew that someone was going to die."

I hesitated. This line of questioning could go several directions, and I didn't like any of them. Come to think of it, my conversations with the Boy Who Lived always seemed to flirt with dangerous territory. "Y-yes. I did. I do that sort of thing."

"Did you know Sirius was going to die, then?"

And there it was. The question I was most afraid of him asking. What was I supposed to do? _Yes, Harry, it came to me clear as day the moment I saw him, but I didn't do a damn thing about it! Sorry 'bout that. More tea?_ This was the boy's godfather, the closest thing to his birth family he had ever and would ever know. Well, that liked him, at least. He had his mother's sister's family, but that lot seemed a bit woolly.

So, I did what I hated to do. I lied. I lied to the Boy Who Lived, who could survive a Killing Curse but could apparently not survive the truth, according to my logic.

"No, Harry. I don't get everything."

There was not much more for us to say, and Harry eventually wandered back to his friends. Remus and I sat in silence, alternately drinking out of our tankards as I sat with my unsettled thoughts.

"Eight-letter word for an ingredient in Elixir to Induce Euphoria."

"Wormwood," I answered automatically.

"_Did_ you know Sirius was going to be killed?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When he came in the room during the battle."

"There was nothing you could do," Remus informed me as he carefully wrote 'wormwood' on the paper. "So, wait, then, what would be a four-letter word for a plant used in the Famous French Method for a Mad Dog Bite?"

"I only know Herbology in relation to potion making," I reminded him glumly. Remus stared at the paper for a moment, waved his wand to remove the incorrect answer, and stared at the blank squares some more. "I probably could have done something."

"You couldn't," he told me firmly. "Don't blame yourself for Sirius's death, Melbecka. It wasn't your fault."

I grabbed the section of the Prophet closest to me as a distraction and sighed. "That's what I keep telling myself, but it's hard to get rid of the nagging. There's just this…" I trailed off as I read the small blurb in the bottom corner of the page I had. "Florean's been found."

"Really?" Remus's head perked up. He cast aside the crossword and stood up to hover over me, one hand on the table and one on the back of my chair, scanning the page for the article I saw. "Where is he? _How_ is he?"

"Dead."

Remus sank back down in his seat. "Dammit." He rubbed his eyes wearily. "Every time…"

"Why him?" I asked. "He just sold ice cream. Ollivander could supply them with wands; it made sense to kidnap him. But Florean…"

"I'm sure they had their reasons. We'll figure it out, Mel," Remus sighed heavily.

I did not want to think any more about how we failed Florean, so I changed the subject quickly to something that had long lingered on my mind. "Are you in love with Tonks?"

"Excuse me?" Remus snapped his head up. "What did you ask?"

"Tonks. Are you in love with her?"

"I don't see how that is any of your business, Melbecka," he answered sharply.

I shrugged as if it did not matter to me, even though it absolutely did. "It's not. I just see the way you two look at each other. So, I wondered. That's all." Except I cared much more than I let on, of course. I desperately wanted Remus and Tonks to have a fairytale romance. The Order could use a bit of that right now. Bill and Fleur had to go falling in love in the background. What the hell where they thinking? Would it have killed them to be an adorable almost-couple in front of us? Seriously!

Remus groaned and massaged his forehead. "Things are not as simple as sharing looks across a crowded room, Mel."

"I know. But, if you love her, maybe it's worth risking it. I know there's a war-"

"I'm a werewolf, Mel."

"I…" That caught me off guard, and I jutted my face forward and narrowed my eyes to see him more clearly as I tried to figure out why that mattered. "Yes, sir, I am aware of your lycanthropy."

"It's not just an inconvenience," he snapped. "I'm a danger to her. One second is all it takes. Just one small lapse in judgment. Not to mention being with someone like me would absolutely ruin her name and sentence her to a life of poverty; I can't find work anywhere with the blasted legislation."

"Remus," I reached for his hand, and he surprised me by actually letting me take it, "if she truly loves you, and I think she does, then she doesn't care about any of that."

"She doesn't have to care," he reminded me, giving my hand a gentle squeeze before pulling himself free. "I do."

* * *

**Thank you all so much for your wonderful reviews! They always make me smile.**

_**Next Chapter: Sleepless Nights and Brand New Days**_


	5. Sleepless Nights and Brand New Days

Even though permanently sharing a bed with George did wonders to calm my mind, I still had nights where sleep eluded me. Memories of Sirius Black's last moments flashed in front of my eyes, my nerves screamed as if I was once again hit by Bellatrix Lestrange's Cruciatus curse, and now visions of Death Eaters marching through Diagon Alley invaded my dreams as well. My new home, the one I worked so hard to find a place in, was ruined in a matter of minutes. Even 93 Diagon Alley no longer felt safe.

On one such night, when the screams of Florean Fortesque were too much to bear in the darkness of the bedroom, I wandered down into the shop, dragged out my cauldron, and did the only thing that ever really calmed my nerves. I began brewing a potion. I had no idea what to brew, of course, but that never stopped me. Besides, one more explosion would hardly hurt the place; Merlin knew the boys blew the place up enough. Hence why the counter was so far away from the products. Perfect for experimenting.

There was something very calming about chopping and crushing ingredients. The rhythmic churning of my mortar and pestle helped to steady my breathing, but my hands still shook more than I wanted. The cuts of my asphodel were uneven and therefore essentially useless, but I dumped them in anyway. I could not seem to muster the strength to squeeze a lemon into the cauldron, but instead fumbled the fruit and dropped the whole thing. I stared at the brew dumbly, wondering what exactly would happen with a whole lemon inside the potion. This was new. I had never done that before. Carefully, I picked up my quill to record the change of events, but accidentally scratched right through the parchment. My second attempt fared much better.

To focus my mind better, I decided to try a little wandless spell casting. With all the practice I had put in lately, I was getting much better at getting the spell to go from my mind to my fingertips without the terrible headaches and exhaustion and need for complete focus. It was just something else to think about instead of my dreams. So, I gestured at a second lemon to slice it and used my mind to levitate it over the cauldron to actually squeeze the juice in (because, really, how much harm could a little more lemon juice do at this point?).

"Mellie?"

I screamed at George's voice and flung my hands out to protect myself, which sent a spell at him and knocked him straight to the ground. As soon as I realized what happened, my hands flew to my mouth and I leapt from my stool, but George slowly pushed himself up so he was sitting on the steps.

"Owwwwww," he moaned.

"I'm _so _sorry, George!" I gasped. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he grunted, which was not at all reassuring. He winced as he rubbed the back of his head, then tenderly checked his ribs. "Ow." He studied his palms. "I'm bleeding."

"From where?" I was at his side in an instant, although healing with wands was a horrifying notion. Gilderoy Lockhart permanently ruined my trust in the process.

"Dunno. My hand?" I checked, pressing my thumb to the heel of his hand. He hissed and yanked his hand away. "Yeah, yeah that's it. _Ow_! Why'd you do that?"

"You said you didn't know, so I was checking!" I insisted, noticing vaguely that my voice had gone up in pitch. "You were either bleeding from your hand or your head, so-"

"Not that!" His voice had gone up, too. A shock thing, maybe. "Why'd you knock me down?"

"You scared me! You know not to scare me!"

"I thought you'd know it was me! Who else calls you Mellie?"

"Anyone is capable of calling me Mellie, George! In the event of a sneak attack, the enemy may think to use a pet name to lull me into a false sense of security!"

George made a face that was half wince, half exasperation. "That's absolutely ridiculous."

Probably true, but at the time it felt _very _logical. "It couldn't have been you! I was making a potion, and someone said my name, but everyone was asleep –"

"_I_ wasn't asleep, because _you_ weren't asleep, because you _never_ sleep, and it _bothers_ me that you can never sleep, so I came down to see what was wrong, but I'll never make that mistake again, don't worry." He chuckled mostly out of disbelief, waved me off, and straightened himself into a more comfortable sitting position.

"Oh, honestly!" I huffed. "I don't know why you're being so dramatic. I just couldn't sleep. I'm fine."

"You are _not_," he insisted off-handedly, his attention focused on his scratched palm. "If it was one night, sure, fine, no problem. But I've developed this annoying habit of reaching out in my sleep to pull you closer to me only to find that you're not even in the same room, and it wakes me up. I'd really like to just reach out, find you, and keep on sleeping. That would be nice."

Even though this was supposed to be serious, I couldn't help but let out a breathy laugh at the way he put it. Of course he cared about my well-being, which was admittedly much worse off than I let on, but George knew better than to push me on it. Making it seem like he cared more about his own sleep made his concern sit better with me for some reason.

"Here, I think there's a cloth around here somewhere…" I smiled and looked around until I realized we actually did not have any clothes handy in the shop. Of course we wouldn't; cloths were good for cleaning spills and dusting up, rending them useless in a shop run with magic. Rolling my eyes at how unprepared magic sometimes made us, I summoned one of the cloths used to wrap potion ingredients, made sure there were no stray rosemary flowers on it, and pressed it to his hand. He hissed at the pressure but kept his hand out for me. Of course, any other witch or wizard could have fixed this with a simple spell, but George knew how nervous healing spells made me. "Sorry if it hurts."

"No, 's fine," he told me, voice tight with pain. "Would be even better if you hadn't sent me on my arse." He offered a half smile to assure me he was joking. "What was it tonight?" I frowned at him. "That woke you up. Did you Feel something?"

"Oh." Duh. "No, nothing like that. I don't get stuff in my sleep." George really tried, bless him, but my irregular version of the Sight could be more than he could wrap his head around sometimes. I didn't get visions in my dreams or images of the future. I just got Feelings. Sometimes, I would touch something or look at someone or hear the right phrase and would just Know. "It was nothing, really. I just woke up." It was lame and pointless, but I still tried the lie. George exaggerated his eyes roll so much that he rolled his whole head and ended by staring at me with wide, expectant eyes. "Bad dream."

"I know. That's what it normally is."

"No, it's not." Dammit. George's eyebrows shot up at this revelation. "Normally, I just can't sleep at all. My mind's just racing with…well, with all kinds of things. Something I Know or something that happened that day or Sirius or…"

"Siri- Mel, you can't keep blaming yourself for that. It wasn't your fault."

"I know," I insisted quickly. Automatically. I did know that, really. I did. "I know it's not my fault. It doesn't mean I don't think about it." And how I could have stopped it. As would anyone else in my position. Yes, my mind probably did dwell on things for longer than was healthy, but I maintain that I was within my rights to still be thinking about Sirius's death. "That's not the point. The point is that I don't normally wake up. I normally don't fall asleep."

"You sleep. I've seen you sleep," George frowned.

"I do," I confirmed, pulling the cloth back to check his hand. I don't know why I bothered; I had no idea what I was looking for, so I just recovered it and applied more pressure that caused pain on my lover's face. "Fitfully. And I've been getting better. Most nights, I'm fine. I've slept so much better since moving in here." Something lit up in his eyes at my words, and my heart swelled knowing that I could make his face do that. To make us both happy, I quickly pecked his lips before going back to talking. "I just still have…moments."

"Well," he yawned, "I don't want you to have moments. I want you to be able to sleep."

"I don't how anyone can sleep. Not with everything that's happened. How Fred can snore away…"

"He sounds like a bear with a sinus block," George grumbled. I laughed out loud because it was so true. Not that I had ever heard a bear with a sinus block, but it had to sound fairly similar. "I don't snore like that, do I?"

"You don't," I assured him with another kiss. This time, as I pulled away, he leaned his face forward to catch my lips again.

"But you had a bad dream tonight, yeah?"

My face fell, our joke ruined by that simple question. "Yeah. The attack."

George nodded knowingly. "We don't have to live afraid, Mel. I know it doesn't feel as safe here as it used to, but living in fear of the next Death Eater attack just gives them another victory."

"I know," I murmured.

George frowned at me, studying my face intently to the point that I shifted uncomfortably and let out a nervous laugh. "Have I ever taken you on a proper date?"

I thought about this. "No. You haven't. That's never happened." Which felt odd, really, considering all we had done together. But George and I fell in love and became a couple without all the wining and dining. Since when was I so low-maintenance? This seemed wrong…

"We should fix that. Tomorrow. Let's have a date day. Let's do that." He nodded definitively, the matter decided as far as he was concerned. But, I was the practical one, and I shook my head.

"Georgie," I laughed, beaming at how sweet he could be, "the kids just got their book lists. Diagon Alley'll be swarming tomorrow. We can't leave."

"Yes, we can. Angie can help. And Fred can get Verity in. She's good with shop things." I frowned at the unfamiliar name. "The girl that helped stock the shelves." Oh, right, her. She spent two weeks or so helping us put product out before Angie came. She was the daughter of some shopkeeper who wanted her to learn the trade at a store other than the family business, cross-training or whatever. Nice girl. Organized. "So, we'll go out! Dress nice."

"Can't I just wear what I always do?"

George considered this. "Yeah, actually, do that. Sounds better."

"Your hand is really bleeding," I informed him, although my smile probably undermined my worry. George shrugged and took his hand back.

"I'll get Fred to patch me up."

"Get Angie, please. She's better with healing."

George rolled his eyes and stood up. "Fine. I'll get Angie. Come to bed?"

I cast a look at my cauldron, but it did not seem all that important. "Yeah," I nodded. "Bed sounds wonderful."

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG

When light broke, I work up with George's arms wrapped protectively around my waist. I found that I liked that. I liked it very much. I liked how he squirmed when I wanted to get up, struggling to keep me in the bed. I liked the way he pulled me to him to plant kisses on my neck as I got dressed for our day out.

"Should we…Oh, stop that!" I giggled as George, still in bed, pulled me down again. "George, I have to get dressed!"

"You have a skirt and bra. What else do you need?"

"A _shirt_," I insisted. I swatted at his hand as he reached for me. "They won't let me into the respectable world without one."

"Well, then, we won't go anywhere respectable. Problem solved. Just go naked under your robes. No one will know."

"I'll know," I reminded him. "You have to get dressed, too. C'mon."

He stuck his bottom lip out. "I love you."

"I love you, too. Now, get dressed."

Eventually, George did allow me to get dressed and did the same himself, and we headed down into the shop. I yawned lazily as I climbed onto my stool at the counter, where my potion from last night (or early that morning, more accurately) was now a fluorescent yellow color. Odd. Too much lemon, clearly. As I wrapped up my ingredients to store in the cupboard for the day, Fred rushed in. He took one look at us, and his eyes widened.

"What are you doing? What are you _wearing_? Why aren't you in uniform? Mel, you have to be in uniform! We decided on the uniform for a reason! Even _Angie_'s in uniform!" He gestured wildly to a very sad sack of former joy, Angelina Johnson in a magenta robe. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly and her head hung as low as it could, but when her eyes flicked up in my direction, I saw the flash of anger in them. Clearly, she and I were of the same mind about the shop uniform color choice. "And you have no idea how much complaining she did about that!"

"No, I think Mel has a very good idea about that," Angie grumbled. "Would it have killed you to pick blue or something?"

Fred growled and looked heavenward for strength. "Yes. It would. Would you hush up about it?" Angie wrinkled her nose and dramatically mimicked "Would you hush up about it?" but refrained from actually saying anything. "Why aren't you two ready? They'll be beating down the doors any minute now!"

"I told you last night to get Verity in," George reminded his twin patiently. "Mel and I aren't going to be here."

"You did not say you weren't going to be here!" Fred's eyes grew huge. "You said to get Verity, yeah, but not because you wouldn't be here."

George rolled his eyes. "Why else would you call her in?"

"Because it's going to be busier than the library the week before O.W.L.s, that's why!"

"Like you even know what that looks like. I don't even know what that looks like. Mel, what does that look like?"

Three sets of eyes turned to me, although Angie quickly lost interest and turned back to picking sorrowfully at her robes. "Busy."

"See!" Fred threw his hands up. "It's going to be busy. That cinches it! You're a co-founder of this shop; you can't just leave."

"That's not what Mel said. Look, I'm taking her out for the day. You'll do just fine without us. You have Angie, and you'll have Verity. That's three people, which is what we always have."

"Yeah, it's three people, but it's not _the_ three people. It's not you and me, mate!"

Angie whipped her head up dangerously. "What does that make me, Fred?"

"Not now, Angie," he tossed over his shoulder. Bad plan. Angie was off her stool in a second, drawn up to full height, glowering at him. Fred shrank back and offered a weak smile. "Angie! Did I say 'not now'? I meant…you're…a…erm…"

"Cow?" I supplied. Fred shot me a look.

"You know, mate, Mum's coming today," he told George suddenly. We all froze. Why hadn't he mentioned this sooner? Why did none of us know this? Angie looked at me since this was the sort of information I normally dispensed when the boys got a hair-brained scheme. I shook my head dumbly and turned to George, who stared blankly at his brother. Excellent. Count on Fred to just sit on vital information.

"Your _mother_ is coming today?" Angie blurted finally. Fred nodded. "Your _mother_?"

"Yes, my mother, Angie, thank you for keeping up," he rattled off quickly. "Look, George, you know if she's coming –"

"-that she's bringing Gin, Ron, Harry, and Hermione-" George continued.

"-and if you're not here for Gin, Ron, and his friends-"

"-she'll murder me-"

"-without hesitation."

"Damn," George hissed. Fred confirmed with a not-so-disappointed, "Damn," and summoned George's robe. With some muttering, George took off the robes he was wearing, dumped them on the floor, and put on his uniform. I picked up his discarded clothes and carefully folded them, and Angie put them in the cupboard with my potion ingredients.

"What about you?" Fred asked.

"No, you go out," George insisted quickly. "Have your day. Go buy yourself clothes or shoes or something. With the two of us and Verity, we'll have this. It is you and me, right, mate?" Fred considered this for a moment and nodded.

"Yeah, I s'pose so."

Angie's eyes sparked hopefully. "What about me?"

"Yeah!" I blurted. "What about her?"

George shrugged as he fished through a drawer on the counter. "I don't care. Fred?" He found what he searched for and tossed me a small leather purse. I yelped as it came at my face and threw my hands up to block it; it hit off of my wrist, and ricocheted to the left, landing with a _thump_ on the ground. Angie snorted, but the boys were used to my terrible hand-eye coordination by now. George glanced to make sure he hadn't killed me, which he hadn't, and Fred did not even look.

"Yeah, go," Fred nodded. "We'll be fine."

"Wait, so you only fussed so _I _wouldn't leave?" George made a face. "Puss."

As the boys bantered, I retrieved the pouch and opened it to see what exactly George threw at me. Angie peered in, too, and Ooo'd at the contents. "George, what is this for?" I asked. As far as I could tell, there was absolutely no reason for me to have a bag of galleons.

"Spending money," he shrugged nonchalantly.

"This is more than spending money," Angie breathed, fingering through the galleons to get a count. "Way more."

"How much is in there?" Fred asked George rather than us.

"Twelve…fifteen…twenty-four galleons."

"Oh," Fred snorted, "yeah, take it. We'll make that back today."

"You do realize that, if you give us this money, we will spend it? Every knut?" I cautiously informed them.

George shrugged. "One request."

"It's your money," Angie shrugged. "Go for it."

Fred and George shared a look, doing that thing they do where they communicated without any words. I hated when they did that because, no matter how well I knew them, I never could understand them when they did that. Finally, George spoke, "Buy yourselves something fancy."

"By fancy," Fred cut in, "he means sexy."

"I mean fancy."

"He means hot."

* * *

_**Next chapter: Going Out and Going Back**_


	6. Going Out and Going Back

For four years of my life, Zonko's Joke Shop in Hogsmeade had been a staple in my life. Fred and George first dragged me through its doors that third year of school to show me all of the supposedly wonderful things this store had. I spent most of that first trip looking over my shoulder, convinced that my mother had followed us to Hogsmeade and was ready to leap out from behind a display to drag me back to school for even being inside a joke store. I could even hear her voice in my head, lecturing me on how a prank-gone-wrong could explode in my face (not to mention land me in detention).

Once I learned that my mother actually had no intention of venturing to Hogsmeade, I loosened up in the shop. I still felt like the boys were just looking at rows upon rows of doom, but I could at least tolerate being in there. They did have a section of fairly tame candies, much like we now had, that Angie, Katie, Alicia, and I would look at while Fred, George, and Lee went gaga for the more ridiculous things.

I had many memories of this old building, from hiding behind George when Fred and Lee dropped the first Filibusters Firework I ever saw to standing in the corner with Angie as we giggled at the boys' childish enthusiasm. Seeing it boarded up like this actually physically hurt my heart. The book had closed on that part of my life, and I found, much to my surprise, that I rather missed it. Somehow, this building looked so much quainter now that it was empty. I never noticed all of the unpainted wood, the carvings around the doorways, the sloped ceiling. In fact, it hardly felt like a joke store; if someone told me I stood in an extension of the Burrow I had never wandered into before, I would believe them. Funny how displays of terrifying pranks could change a room's appearance.

Fred and George, rather shockingly, viewed the hollow shell of the shut-up shop as quite the business opportunity. Business was absolutely booming, and now that Hogwarts was back in session and the first student visit had already come and gone, the boys were looking at expansion. Angie and I could not quite see how the business could expand when the four of us and Verity could barely handle one store, but Fred and George were never ones to let logistics get in the way of their plans.

That was how we found ourselves out that rainy day in early October, Angie and I sporting the matching trench coats we purchased courtesy of the boys' hard earned galleons. Rain pelted down in sheets, splattering against the windows and beating against the doors. I could barely see the beams supporting the store's awning as I looked outside, and Angie softly bemoaned her sopping wet braids. My hair had not fared any better, and my curls were plastered to the back of my neck and around my cheeks. A quick drying spell could have fixed it, but why bother when we would be back outside so quickly?

For as long as I could remember, I had hated storms. It was not the storm, per se, but the noise. I actually loved rain, but when it came down so fast that gutters overflowed and came accompanied by crashes of thunder that made the room shake, I feared what the storm could hide. Think of all the things using the distraction of a thunderstorm to mask their movements and breathing and plotting.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky, and I braced myself against the windowsill for the inevitable _ba-ba-BAROOM _that followed. When I opened my eyes, George had wandered to my side, and I jumped at his sudden appearance. This was a prime example of why I hated storms. Any other day, I would have heard him coming a mile off; no one had ever or would ever describe George as 'stealthy'. In a storm, though, he could easily get the upper hand. I did not like being that vulnerable.

"Don't sneak up on me!" I scolded him, and George offered a sheepish grin as an apology.

"We're done here, I think, if you want to go home," he told me as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders to give a reassuring squeeze.

"Actually, I thought, y'know, since we're out this way already, that we might swing by Hogwarts? I left so quickly that I think I left some of my stuff in Snape's ingredient cabinet, and I'd rather not have the students getting into them."

George made a face, but another clap of thunder interrupted whatever he might have said. He used his other arm to completely encircle me, and I turned my face into his chest with fright. Quite the impression to make on the property agent.

Once the rumbling passed, I pulled away and continued. "Look, I know it's not your favorite place, but some of that stuff is hard to get, and with all the attacks lately, shops are closing left and right. I may not be able to just go out and buy more."

"Right, yeah." George ran his hand through his hair and peered wide-eyed at the ran outside. "I know. I just wish you would've said something earlier."

"I told you three days ago," I reminded him. George gave me a sideways look, and Fred noticed it as he wandered over and decided he should probably divert course and instead opted to stand by Angie rather than his brother. "You didn't listen, did you? You never listen, George."

"I listen very well, thank you!" he protested. "I just need _reminded _sometimes. You don't remember everything, either!"

"Oh, and what have I forgotten recently?"

"Apparently, some potion ingredients."

Touché. I had to give him that one. Of course, being the woman in the relationship, I could not let him off that easily. So, even though he had made me grin, I ruffled his hair and pointed out, "I need someone to go with me. I don't much fancy going by myself."

George winced. "You _know_ Hogwarts and I aren't on the best of terms. What if they drag me back and make me take N.E. or something, Mellie?"

"They won't do that," Angie snorted. "Honestly, get over yourself, George. Umbridge is gone, Dumbledore's back, and everyone's joyful again."

"I don't waaaaaant toooooooo!" he whined. Knowing he sounded childish, he played it up by stamping his feet and spinning his torso so his arms flapped from side to side. "Don't make meeeee gooooooo!"

Fred growled and took my arm. "Blimey, I'll go with her if you're going to be a twat."

"You don't want to go, either," I reminded Fred, wrinkling my nose at the hand wrapped around my elbow.

"Oh, Merlin, no!" Fred insisted. "Of course I don't. But, if it'll shove it to George, I'll do it!"

Angie found this hilarious and had to throw a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. We all still heard it, of course, and Fred glowered at her. This, however, only sent her further into hysterics. "I…I could…" she stopped to laugh some more. "Could…go with…"

"_NO_!" Fred insisted. "I have this! You two go home. Spend quality time. I don't see nearly enough of Mel now, anyway, what with George all over her."

"Oy!" George exclaimed. "I'm _allowed_ to be all over her."

"You hog her!" Fred demanded. "I don't hog Angie!"

"I'm not your girlfriend," Angie pointed out.

Fred waved her off. Details, details. As Fred dragged me towards the door, because I clearly had no say in this anymore, I shot Angie a devilish grin. Her eyes widened in horror, and she lunged for us. She knew exactly what my quality time with Fred would entail now, and she would stop it if she had her way. Fred, however, was much too quick for her, and before she could get out more than an incoherent garble of protest, we were out the door.

The grounds of Hogwarts were extremely difficult to access for non-students for protection, something I supported fully. However, it made Fred and my journey in that fine British weather rather unpleasant, as we had to apparate just outside of the grounds and walk the rest of the way. The rain made it particularly unpleasant, but Fred looped his arm through mine, we ducked our heads, and off we trudged towards the looming castle.

"So, Fred," I started, and he looked at my warily. He knew that tone.

"You're going to meddle, aren't you? You've got your meddling face on."

"I'm not going to…I do not have a meddling face!" I insisted. All right, fine, so I _was _going to meddle, and I probably _did_ have a meddling look on my face, but he did not have to call me out on it. "I just have a question for you, and this really is the first time we've been alone in a while for me to ask it." Fred heaved a sigh and nodded for me to go on. "Last time I saw you in this old place, you were rather locked at the lips with a certain hotheaded friend of ours. What happens to be the progress in that department?"

"Oh, honestly, Mel," he grumbled. Keeping our arms linked, he pulled his body away from mine to sidestep a puddle, and we pulled back together once we passed it. "Have you been thinking about that this whole time?"

"Not the whole time, no. Just a large portion of it. Look, I know her opinion on the matter, but I don't know yours. Besides, she's rubbish at telling me what you two talk about; I only just found out before last Christmas that you two got all…" I made a face, "_snoggy_ at the Yule Ball."

Fred groaned and rolled his head back in exasperation, earning himself a face full of rain. That only made him growl, frustrated, and shake his head like a wet dog. "She really told you about that?"

"Only in abstract terms," I assured him. "Details would have made me sick." He shot me a dark look. "Kidding! Cor, lighten up! I mean, you two joke around all the time, and you do all these little things that make me think there's something there; touches, little looks, always standing together, and all of that. But neither one of you ever makes any kind of move except for when you two left this daft place and you snogged her, but, from what I can tell, nothing ever came of that!"

Fred and I stopped walking at this point because we had reached the castle gates. While I desperately wanted some answers from Fred, there were more pressing matters. Although I had sent Wooster earlier in the week to inform both Dumbledore and Snape that I would be stopping by to collect my things sometime in the future, they could hardly be expected to wait anxiously at the gates for my arrival. Essentially, we were locked out.

So, at a loss for what to do, Fred and I stood at the iron gates to our former school in the downpour and shouted as loudly as we could in hopes that someone passing by would hear us. Occasionally, we cupped our hands around our mouths to funnel the sound and get it to carry farther. I even tried bouncing on the balls of my feet, like maybe that would make me louder.

Needless to say, those plans proved unsuccessful.

Frustrated, Fred grabbed the gates and shook them, which only succeeded in splattering even more water on my face. I yelped and jumped back to avoid taking any more splatters in the eye, so he stopped and held his hands up to show he was finished taking out his anger on the gate.

"Look, it's not that nothing ever came of it. It's just that…well, you know! It was a heat of the moment kind of thing. Angie and I aren't like you and George. I _like_ her, sure – she's loads better than most girls – and I certainly like snogging her, but we're not going to be anything more than that. Every time I try…it just never quite works. Some people are just meant to be friends."

"Oh, please!" I snorted. "Frederick Gideon Weasley and Angelina Danielle Johnson are not _some people_. Normally, I wouldn't encourage you to seek romantic involvement with anyone, knowing what a dunderhead you are." And that you're going to die like me. But, of course, I kept that part to myself and thanked whoever may be listening that Fred occupied himself peering through the gates rather than looking at me when that dark thought flashed in my mind. "But, you two are clearly already very much emotionally tied already. There's no avoiding it at this point. You need to ask her on a proper date."

"I don't _need_ to do anything," he corrected sharply, still looking inside the grounds for someone, anyone, to end his agony. "Since when are you the queen of relationships, anyway? All you and George seem to do lately is argue."

Ouch. That one actually hurt, mostly because it seemed to be true. I knew exactly why we kept irritating each other like we had at the shop, although it must seem like such a mystery to everyone else. Especially George. When I looked at him, all I could think of was the look on his face when my potion effectively erased all memory he had of my telling him Fred and I would die in the oncoming war. It still made me sick to think about it. He always told me that, when the burden of what I Knew got to be too much, he would be there. And I always held him at arm's length, trying to protect him from the burden of Knowing things you cannot change, until it really did get to be too much. The one person who I should go to with any problem, big or small, and I betrayed his trust so badly that he didn't even know I did it.

"Every couple fights," I mumbled, tightening my jacket around me as if it was a shield to keep out his words. "It's normal."

"Oh, yeah," he agreed. "It is. It's just not normal for you two. You and George don't fight."

"Well, we do now. You know who _does_ fight? You and Angie. Because of all your unaddressed sexual tension."

Fred grinned at my deflection. "Look, I like her. I do. I just don't know if dating her is the best idea."

"Why not?"

"I…" Fred stopped, frowned, and cocked his head to the side. "Well…erm…I don't…" He rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in the air, finally giving up. Point to me. "Well, what if she doesn't like me all that much?"

"Aw!" My face broke out in a grin, and I threw my arms around Fred in a bear hug that caught him off-balance and sent us staggering back several steps. "Freddie, you're adorable!"

Fred obligingly squeezed back, but still looked horrendously confused when I pulled away. "I strive for that, yeah. What did I do this time?"

I giggled as movement caught my eye. Professor Sprout's herbology class was letting out. Perfect. "Oh, Freddie. I love you, you know that, yeah?"

"Erm…yeah, I do," he agreed. "I love you, too, Mel. …What just happened?"

I ignored that, of course, and frantically stuck my wand-hand between the bars. Before I could send off a flare to get Sprout's attention, though, she saw us and let us in. Thank-you's and greetings were brief, as she apparently had quite a mess to clean up from the first years and we were really very soaked from being in the rain for so long, so we parted with our former professor quickly and ducked inside. Two quick drying spells later, we headed through the throngs of students for the dungeons, pausing only when my former Ravenclaw quidditch teammates attacked to tell me they had yet to find a decent keeper to replace me. Apparently, no one wanted to fill the shoes of the girl who willingly flew into the path of a bludger to protect the goal. And I thought I was the scaredy cat.

We did eventually make it to the dungeons, where I expected to find Professor Snape in his classroom preparing for his next class. Not the case. Instead, Fred and I stopped dead in the doorway at the sight of a rather old, rather bald, dreadfully fat man with a silvery moustache.

"Who are you?" I burst out. This was wrong. This man was not Snape! He turned towards us sharply, and immediately broke out into a wide smile at the sight of us.

"Oh! Hello. I didn't realize it was time for class already. My goodness, I'm not even set up yet." He looked at us more closely, though, and frowned. "But, I thought it was only third year…"

"No, no we're not here for class," I corrected. "I'm looking for Professor Snape. Er, I graduated last year and left some things behind."

The strange little man's eyes grew wide as saucers. "Oh. _Oh_. You must be Melbecka Harper. Yes, yes, they told me you were coming!" He shuffled towards us quickly, waddling due to his weight. Fred took a half step in front of me, which I found myself extremely grateful for, but the man thrust a hand around Fred for me to shake. "Professor Horace Slughorn, potions master."

"You can't be the potions master," I frowned, ignoring his offer at shaking hands. "Professor Snape is..."

"Teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year," Slughorn explained quickly, not the least bit perturbed by my rudeness. "Miss Harper, I have heard _all_ about you. Yes, oh, if you were still a student, I would be quite honored to teach you. I have heard you are _quite_ proficient in potion making."

Fred stiffened and took a short, firm step forward to force Slughorn away from me. "Yeah, she's bloody wonderful. Where's Snape?"

Slughorn's smile vanished, the light extinguished from his eyes, and his nose wrinkled at an unpleasant scent Fred and I could not detect. I suspected, however, that it was the scent of an overprotective big brother. "Ah, yes," he stated flatly, "you must be Mr. Weasley."

"I am."

"Your sister, Ginerva, is extremely talented."

"And Ron's crap, thanks, yeah, I know how my family operates," Fred finished. "We're looking for Snape."

"Of course, yes, you did say that." He pursed his lips in distaste and then turned to me with a pleasant smile. "Miss Harper, I believe you will find Professor Snape in his usual office with your belongings. As soon as we realized we had too much stock, he set them aside. Knew right away they had to be yours." His smile faltered momentarily as he muttered, "Said something about miscreants, too, I think."

"Thank you," Fred hissed, accenting both words. I lightly brushed his elbow to call him off of the attack; this man clearly meant us no harm. He was just passionate. We could not fault him for being excitable about potioneering talent. Even if it was overbearing.

"We'll just be off then," I offered with the sweetest smile I could muster in the cloud of testosterone coming off of Fred. "Thank you." With that, I grabbed Fred and yanked him back out of the classroom.

"Oh, of course, he may be in the hospital wing with the girl!" Slughorn called after us. "If you can't find him anywhere else, check there."

"Right, hospital wing, thanks," Fred saluted, ready to continue away. Something about the comment, though, made me stop. Or, rather, something made me feel like I needed to know more about this; call it my half-assed Sight kicking in, call it intuition, call it a terrible habit of assuming my friends are always the ones in harm's way.

"What girl? What happened?"

"Oh, haven't you heard? Well, it happened quite a while ago…" Slughorn frowned, and muttered to himself, "S'pose they wanted to protect her privacy." He shrugged and looked back at me. "A girl was cursed in Hogsmeade nearly a month ago now. Rather odd, really, something to do with an amulet. No one is quite sure who was behind it. She was quite lucky, really; it should have killed her. They'll be taking her to St. Mungo's in a day or two; Professor Snape's been keeping a steady supply of pain relieving potions for her. Of course, I wasn't the one to tell you any of that."

He had Fred's attention now, and my friend and I shared a worried look. This sounded serious. Student's being cursed? In Hogsmeade, no less. No wonder Zonko's was shut up and the streets seemed so desolate. And we had thought it all tied back to the Diagon Alley attack.

"What student?" Fred asked. "What's her name?"

Slughorn screwed up his face as he thought. "Lovely girl, Gryffindor…Katie? Yes, that's it. Katie Bell."

* * *

**I really had fun writing the bit with Fred and Mel, but the rest of it took me a while to get just right. I hope you enjoy even though there was a bit of a delay in posting! Thank you all so much for your wonderful reviews, reading, following, and favoriting!**

_**Next Chapter: A New Recruit**_


	7. A New Recruit

If I had to pick one place I absolutely hated to go, I would pick St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies. After our visit there to see Katie Bell, who insisted chipperly that she was fine even as she struggled to sit up straight, I left our shop to go for a walk in the chilly mid-October evening. The sun was just starting to set, casting long shadows on the empty streets of Diagon Alley.

Was it sad that it was beginning to feel normal for the diminished crowds to leave so early in the day? I found that I rarely thought about the bustling days before the attack anymore. The more time passed, the less I thought about how things used to be. I could only think about how things were in that moment and how they would be when the war ended. Which it would, I kept reminding myself. This was all temporary. Voldemort had been defeated once, and he would be defeated again. This time, with Harry Potter, it would be for good. There would be no return.

Of course, to achieve the ultimate victory, many more sacrifices would be made. Sacrifices like Emmaline and Amelia. Like Katie. Like me.

George originally wanted to come with me, but I insisted I wanted to be alone. I even snapped at him a bit when he chased after me with a jacket, although now I rather wished I had taken it. It was a bit nippy, after all. Hopefully, he understood. I just really hated that hospital. All the sick and dying, reminders of how a perfect life could be ruined in an instant by something completely innocent, made me queasy. Katie's life changed immediately because of an amulet. An _amulet_. It made me feel like the charm bracelet on my wrist, a Christmas present from Fred, would kill me somehow. Maybe the necklace I wore, a gift from George, would strangle me. Who knew?

I heard Angie's footsteps running up behind me and knew it was her before she said anything, recognizing her gate and the little "hmph" noises she always made as she ran. Still, I pulled out my wand just in case, only to put it away when she caught up. She easily caught my stride and fell into step with me, walking silently beside me for quite a while. The sun was no more than a sliver on the horizon, and I was just turning back for home with my head no clearer, when she broke our silence.

"I have to join the Order."

"Excuse me?" I frowned at her. "You have to what?" This was news. Angelina Johnson never _had_ to do anything.

"I mean, I don't want to _join_ join. Not like you lot. I don't want to do rescue missions and be in the middle of attacks. But, living with you three and seeing what's happened here," she motioned to Diagon Alley, "and to Katie…" She shook her head. "I need to know what's going on. I need to be in those meetings you go to, not sitting two rooms away with a crotchety house elf. If I can do something to end all this, then I have to do that."

"You're sure?"

Angie nodded solemnly and looped her arm through mine. "I'm sure."

"All right, then. We'll talk to the Order, get you sorted out. There are plenty of tertiary members like that. Only used in emergencies, scouting and things like that."

"Works for me," she agreed. "How are you?"

"I don't like St. Mungo's," I mumbled.

"I know. It wasn't that bad, though. Katie's got a long recovery ahead, but she'll be just fine. She's in good hands."

"I know."

"You've been off lately, Mel. Is everything all right with you and George?"

As we were almost back to the shop, where lights were on and the boys were clearly visible through the windows chucking things at each other and laughing happily, I took our few precious moments to admit something to my dearest, oldest friend.

"No, Angie. I don't think they are. I think I've ruined it."

"I doubt that," she told me, resting her hand on the doorknob. "He's still very much in love with you. You'll sort it out." With that, she opened the door, which I was thankful for. Because, yes, George may still have been very much in love with me, but that was exactly the problem. If he knew what I did, he probably would not be.

"Ah, just the ladies we were looking for!" George beamed. "How're you doing?"

"We're fine," I assured him. I wrapped my arms around him and cuddled against his body for warmth, which he seemed to have no problem with. "I'm cold."

"Because you didn't take a jacket. I _told_ you to take a jacket."

"I know," I mumbled into his chest. "I didn't want one."

"Well, when you wake up tomorrow with a cold, don't complain."

"I'll complain all I like," I informed him, sticking my tongue out playfully. George grinned and planted a kiss on my forehead. Fred gagged.

"Disgusting. You two are absolutely disgusting," he told us.

Angie smacked him solidly in the shoulder. "They're cute," she corrected. "Just because you have the heart of a glumbumble doesn't mean-"

"You want to go out with me?"

"-you get to…_what_?"

Fred's eyes flew wide open, and Angie threw a hand over her mouth and scrambled away from him. Apparently, his question surprised himself as much as it did her. Fred's face turned beat red as Angie stared at him silently, and George buried his face in my hair to keep from laughing. His fit of near giggles put me on the brink of laughter, too, at our friends' predicament, and I stuck two knuckles in my mouth to control myself.

Fred swallowed heavily and tried again. "Do you want to go out with me, like, on a date?" Angie continued to stare, which only seemed to agitate him. "Oh, come off it, Ang, it's not that shocking a question." Nothing. "Angie." She blinked. "Right, if you want to say no, that's fine, just say it." She shook her head slowly, and Fred flared at me. "I told you."

I pulled my fingers from my mouth. "What have I got to do with this?"

"You've been telling me all about how she –"

"Yes."

Fred, unlike Angie, actually stopped at the sound of her voice. "I thought you said 'no'."

"I was just shaking my head. That wasn't a no," she snapped, crinkling her eyes as if she found the very idea of turning him down preposterous. "Are you an idiot?"

Fred looked at George for an answer, but his brother had no answer. "I…don't think so, no. So…that _was_ a yes, then, right?"

Angie rolled her eyes. "Of course it was a yes, you daft dimbo. What else would I say?"

"Erm…" This time, Fred looked at me. The answer just seemed too obvious, and I knew he would get smacked for saying it, but I only shrugged. Let him take the plunge if he felt so inclined. "No?"

Angie "hmph"d and backhanded his forearm. "To be _perfectly clear_, Fred, yes. Yes, I will go on a date with you."

"She's not cheap," I warned him. "I've been on dates with Angie. She's high maintenance.

Angie whirled around to hit me, but I flinched into George's chest and narrowly avoided her hand. "I will end you, Mel, I swear!" She turned back to Fred. "Don't listen to her. I'm not high maintenance."

"I really don't care," Fred informed her. "If you're too much trouble, I'll just leave you behind and go have fun on my own."

* * *

**This one ended up shorter than most, I know, but the next one will probably be on the longer side to make up for it! I'll be going back to school soon, so if posts slow down in a few weeks, that'll be why. Everything should be fine, but I wanted to warn you just in case! As always, thanks for reading and reviewing! Comments, criticisms, suggestions, and whatnot are always welcome!**

_**Next Chapter: Coins and Carefully Laid Traps**_


	8. Coins and Carefully Sprung Traps

As it turns out, fluffy snowflakes significantly reduced business. While I had been at school in past Decembers, I always imagined Diagon Alley to be busy all year long especially during the build-up to Christmas. However, Angie and I found ourselves sitting in a plainly empty shop, Angie fiddling with a galleon as I tried brewing some Amortentia in the new solid gold cauldron George bought me for my birthday two months earlier. I had no use for the love potion, but Angie and I were just dying to know what we would smell.

We had tasked Fred and George with keeping an eye on the dinner I'd started in the back room, and he seemed to think that meant not letting the food out of his sight. This was fine by me, really. It was always nice to have them out of our hair for a bit. However, these moments were fleeting, as Fred proved by popping back into the shop and startling me. Thankfully, I managed not to ruin my delicate potion, a habit of mine that I truly could not stand.

"What's that?" Fred asked as Angie turned the coin over in her hand. "Is that a galleon? Have you been stealing from me?"

"You're hilarious," Angie mumbled. "It's my DA coin."

Fred's eyes widened, and he slid into the seat next to her. "You kept that?" he breathed, resting a hand on one of hers to still her flipping. He leaned his face in right next to hers, red hair mixing with black braids so it was hard to tell where she ended and he began.

"Didn't you keep yours?"

"Yeah!" he exclaimed as if it was obvious, followed closely by, "But I lost it."

Angie rolled her eyes. "I just feel like I need to keep it handy, like something's going to happen."

"Don't you start with the feelings. Mel gives me enough of that," Fred grumbled, still staring at the coin. Angie lowered it, so Fred turned his gaze to her face, which would have been uncomfortably close to him months ago. Not anymore. Neither of them flinched at the feel of the other's breath on their faces. They would not go as far as to label themselves a couple or throw the _dreaded_ "boyfriend/girlfriend" terms around, but their relationship had changed a lot in the past several months.

"I'm right here, y'know," I protested gamely. Fred shot me a look. "Don't mock me, or you don't get dinner."

"You want her dinner," Angie assured him, pecking a kiss right between his eyes. "Something about her potion-y wonder translates excellently to the culinary arts."

"See, but that somewhat frightens me," Fred winced. "She could drug me like she's done George, and I wouldn't even taste it around…what is that, beef stew?"

"It is," Angie confirmed when I did not answer, only stared wide-eyed at Fred. Oh Rowena, he knew. He _knew_.

Bullocks. How could he know?

"What do you mean I drugged George?" I wrinkled my nose, turning back to the Amortentia to hide the blush rising in my cheeks.

"Well, considering the fact that he and I share a fair amount of genes, I can find no other way to explain his seemingly permanent insanity than that you clearly drugged him into love-induced madness."

"WHAT?!" Angie and I both exclaimed. I whirled on him, pestle in hand, and Angie slapped his shoulder. "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded.

"Calm yourselves!" Fred insisted, holding his hands up in defense. "I'm just saying that he didn't mutter to himself half as much before you two started up, and he certainly never scolded me for having a bit of fun like he did this morning."

"Oh," Angie rolled her eyes. "You're not still on about that."

"Of course I'm still on about that!" Fred insisted childishly. He crossed his arms over his chest and stuck his bottom lip out in a pout. At my confusion, he explained, "He told me I wasn't allowed to send Ron this thing I've been working on. It's just a rock, see, but when the moonlight hits it, it turns into a tarantula. He would go mad."

"Oh, honestly," I rolled my eyes. "It's a wonder that boy doesn't have a complex."

"Think how hilarious that would be! Ron wakes up to a big, hairy spider on his face! Priceless!" Fred insisted.

"Aren't tarantulas poisonous?" Angie, the voice of sanity, asked.

"Only a little," Fred rolled his eyes. "He'd live. I could probably even work that bit out so it wouldn't bite or something. See, perfectly safe!"

"Absolutely not," I chuckled. "That's torture to the poor boy."

"See, that's what George said. You've clearly brainwashed him with some concoction I've never even heard of." Fred stuck his tongue out at the sour taste I apparently now created in his mouth.

"Do you think you could at least pretend to like me for today? We do have guests coming for dinner," I reminded him. Fred rolled his eyes dramatically, but it was hard to tell if that was at the idea of pretending not to hate me (which hopefully involved just stopping the pretend hatred of me) or at the thought of half of his family coming over for dinner.

Even though we tried and tried and tried to put it off, we could no longer keep the Weasleys from invading our fortress of solitude. One could practically feel waves of agitation rolling off of Molly Weasley every time we had to go to Grimmauld or the Burrow because our lives had diverged so greatly from hers. With Bill so insistent on marrying Fleur despite her none-too-carefully hidden displeasure, she took great pleasure in George and me visiting. It seemed that she rather liked me in comparison to my French counterpart. Extremely unfair to Fleur, really. I was quite taking a shine to the girl personally. Sure, she was prettier than a diamond in a coal mine which did, admittedly, make me want to punch her, but the girl could hardly help the Veela blood in her. And she was so hilarious; that blunt French upbringing was endearing. Well, at least _I_ found it endearing. Ginny just called her Phlegm.

Then again, Bill and Fleur were coming, too, so I guess Molly wasn't _really_ getting away from them. She just had a better excuse to ignore their engagement when George and I were around. Because, really, what better distraction was there than harping on the fact that George and I were _not_ planning a wedding?

Ugh.

The only consolation I had was that, for once, Arthur Weasley would not interrogate me about muggle ways of life. After all, that happened to be Angelina's area of expertise, and she actually had a certain fondness for discussing it with him. I think part of her missed the simplicity of life in her parents' house. Being a muggle, her father did not like the use of magic in the house unless it was especially necessary. Yes, by all means put out the kitchen fire with a spell, but do the dishes by hand. Vacuum the carpet. Let your flu pass in its own time. I knew I missed some of that, especially the soothing rhythm of cleaning things by hand, so I could only imagine how she must feel. Talking about cars and telephones and vacuum cleaners with Mr. Weasley may be just what the doctor ordered, so to speak.

The ginger crowd bustled through our fireplace all too soon, immediately ruining the calm we were so used to living in. Mrs. Weasley grabbed Angie and me in bone-crushing hugs that ended abruptly because she had three very important things to do. First, she had to not-so-subtly let George know that having a female presence around did the place a load of good and he should consider making the arrangement more "permanent", which turned my boyfriend's face bright red with a mixture of embarrassment and frustration at his marriage-focused mother. Then, she had to ask how, with Angie also under our roof, we had any extra room for other people. When Fred asked what "other people" we would need additional bedrooms for, she shrugged her shoulders and made a vague reference to just how young she had been when she had Bill. Children. Lovely. So, she didn't even care what came first at this point, a wedding or a grandchild. She just wanted _some _kind of furthering to my relationship with George. No pressure. But, before George and I could feel completely mortified, only mostly so, she _had_ to stick her nose in the food.

Mr. Weasley then waylaid Angie to ask about sutures and stitches (his self-prescribed medical treatment after being attacked in the Department of Mysteries last year was still a bit of a heated topic in the family). Bill, Ron, and Fred started talking business – how to set up displays to get people buying more than they really needed, the use of colors to make products more attractive, how much money our WonderWitch line was actually making, how the Shield Hats were coming along, etc. George took to entertaining Ginny with a Headless Hat, making his head vanish and reappear and then doing the same to her in front of the mirror. She found this ridiculous amusing, and her giggles mixed with the boys chatter and Angie's patient corrections and the clattering pots indicating Mrs. Weasley meddling with my food.

But Fleur Delacour was quiet. Far too quiet, especially considering she was French. And it annoyed me. She hovered awkwardly close to me as I debated whether or not to shoo Molly out of my kitchen, but she did not say one word. She just shuffled her feet with downcast eyes, occasionally felt Bill's gaze on her and faked a smile for him but let it fall as soon as he turned back to the blokes, and fiddled with her engagement ring. I could just feel "pretty" radiating off of her, and it irritated me, and she did not speak, and that irritated me more, and she looked so very very _sad_, and that irritated me to the very brink because pretty girls should never ever look sad. So, unable to take out my frustration on a gorgeous woman clearly on the verge of tears, I touched her wrist, making her jump, and cocked my head towards the kitchen. Girl time.

I poked my head through the doorway, motioning for her to stay back. "Mrs. Weasley?"

"Mel! Oh, good! I'm putting some salt in your stew; you didn't put any-"

"Mr. Weasley's trying to coax Angie into agreeing that he would've healed just fine with stitches, and I'm not sure she really knows what he's getting at…"Which may have been a slight exaggeration of the truth, but I knew how to get this woman out of my kitchen. If she could get George and I to walk into her little marriage/baby traps, I could get her away from my food!

"Oh, well, is he really?" Mrs. Weasley set her jaw firmly and froze with her hand halfway to the salt that had no business going in that stew. "We'll just have to see about that, now, won't we?" As I expected, she stomped by without a glance in our directions, too intent on setting her husband straight. One day, that man would learn he was always wrong; even when he was right, as long as he was married to her, he was wrong.

I motioned Fleur in behind me and tried my stew. Damn, it _did_ need salt. Still, just in case I was wrong, I offered a spoon to Fleur, who tried it cautiously. "Needs salt."

"Damn," I mumbled, throwing a handful in and stirring. "What's got you in the dumps?"

"In ze…ze dumps?" she wrinkled her nose. "I am not in ze _garbage_, Mel."

"Upset," I rolled my eyes. "What's got you so upset? You look like someone killed your cat."

"It ees nothing," she mumbled, shaking her head and looking away. I rolled my eyes again and forced some more stew on her. "Better."

"Thought so, thanks. And it's clearly not nothing, because you're absolutely miserable. Did Bill do something stupid?"

"No!" she exclaimed. "No, Bill ees perfect! Zere is nothing he could ever do wrong."

I had to smile at those words because I knew exactly how she felt saying them. I happened to know a very similar boy who could never do anything wrong. Or, rather, who could do a lot wrong and get away with it every single time. "All right, so what's bothering you, then? Something's clearly on your mind."

"Well…" she fiddled with her ring again. Then, she looked up at me with wide, worried eyes. "Mel, do you…do you like me?"

This stunned me just enough that I was unsure of how to answer. I could not think of the last time someone just outright asked if I liked them like that, like we were six years old on the playground deciding if we should be friends forever or not. It was not that I was unsure – I knew that I liked Fleur – but the question itself was just so strange that my Ravenclaw mind tried to figure out where it came from, what prompted it, and just kept coming up blank.

"Ginny calls me..." she wrinkled her nose distastefully, "Phlegm. She thinks I do not 'ear 'er, but I do. And Mrs. Weasley, she also finds me unsuitable. Zey do not think I really love Bill. Zey think I am not good enough, not suitable for zere family. I fear that…per'aps I am not. If Bill is the only one that can stand to be around me…maybe I am…" she shrugged helplessly, "maybe I am not the one 'e ees meant to be with. 'is family means so much to 'im. I cannot ask 'im to choose."

"Oh." It seemed grossly inadequate to make such a tiny noise in response to a woman with such a massive weight on her mind and heart, but I just was not sure what else to say. Simply getting the words off of her chest seemed to do wonders for Fleur, though, who stared wide-eyed at the wall as if this news had surprised her. "D'you love him?"

"Bill? Of course I do!" she exclaimed as if any notion otherwise was ridiculous.

"Then, sod the lot, Fleur. You'll never have a comfortable seat at Christmas, but we're gearing up for a war. Keep a tight hold on what you love." You never know when it will be taken from you. When it will be killed. When you will. But, I could never say that to her. Instead, I waved away the fire under the pot and announced. "This is done. Help me serve."

* * *

**This post took a vastly different direction than I originally intended, but I hope you like it anyway. It's really just filler anyway. I know the story's moving slowly right now, but it'll pick up. Thanks for sticking with it! I love the reviews I'm getting, and if you have any complaints, criticism, ideas, anecdotes, whatever, send it my way!**

**_Next Chapter: The Thought That Counts_  
**


	9. The Thought that Counts

Winter passed remarkably fast for us. Other than a minor kitchen fire, brought on by one of the boy's experiments that I swear happened on purpose to frighten me, the snowy months passed with a refreshing calm. Angie spent the holidays with her family, and we made rounds visiting the Weasleys and the Order. And, I received my first real mission as a member of the Order.

It surprised me to receive a large package from Moody for Christmas. In the past, my fellow fighters chipped in for one large Order present. Not this time. This time, I found a large box sloppily wrapped in plain bronze paper with a blue ribbon wrapped around it and tied in a knot, not to be confused with the traditional bow, on top. Only the finest. I suppose I should have appreciated that he thought enough about me to wrap it in my old house colors.

Opening the package unveiled a container of lacewing flies. Antimony in its crystalline form. Boomslang skin. A small phial of mercury. An identically sized phial of iron filings. Crushed saltpeter. A bicorn horn wrapped in some cheesecloth. Knotgrass. Sal Ammoniac. A jar of leeches. Fluxweed.

In other words, everything I needed to brew a polyjuice potion.

Just to clarify, I asked, "Moody, would you like me to brew you a polyjuice potion?"

"Whatever gave you that notion, Harper?"

"Call it a hunch."

"Well, she really _does_ have the Sight."

So, the potion sat in my beautiful gold cauldron, waiting for the day we would need it. And that day would come; we all knew it would. That was why Mad-Eye wanted it, for this unknown day when a person (or persons) would need to look like someone else. In a matter of months, and a strand of hair or toenail clipping later, we would be prepared. For that reason, and because I adored the opportunity to brew something more challenging than the Boil Cure needed for the boys' candy, I loved the present.

Until the potion was needed, though, the Order had very little to do. There were attacks occasionally, but Voldemort's forces were relatively quiet during the holidays. That suited us just fine. While we knew in the back of our minds that they were most likely preparing for something bigger than we could even imagine, something terrible, we had other things to focus on.

Like how Angie seemed to be spending every night in Fred's room, particularly after their Valentine's Weekend trip to the Cotswold District – Angie always did love the countryside, and Fred seemed to not only survive a particularly mundane weekend of muggle life but to actually enjoy it. Sometime in late February, George and I decided this had been going on long enough to mean her original bedroom was forfeit and took it upon ourselves to remove any of her remaining belongings – of which there were very few since most had found their way across the hall to Fred's – and make it into my workshop. I needed one since the boys did not like have mysterious potions in _their _workshop and I did not like them experimenting near my delicate brews.

"If we put the bed…" George frowned at the room. "Against the wall. Just, like, shove it against the wall. Like…" He scrunched up his eyes and held out his hands to get a better visual on the room's dimensions. "Like, against the wall there. Yeah? That'd give you more room in the middle."

"George, do you think we should put the bed against the wall?" I laughed. George dropped his hands and gave me a look that said not to make fun of him. As if that would happen, and he knew it. "Yeah, I think that'll work. We'll have to clear her shoes out of the armoire so I can put my ingredients in it. Oh, wait!" I leapt from the doorway, shoved past my boyfriend, and flung open the doors. "Yeah, I'll need a shelf in here. Can you build me a shelf?" I gave him a wide-eyed stare and stuck out my bottom lip ever so slightly to ensure getting my way.

He slapped a hand over his eyes and dragged it slowly down his face. "Mellie, I'm not a carpen…yeah, I'll build you a shelf." He shook his head at how easily he gave in to me. "I'll get her shoes out if you'll strip the bed."

The sheets had just landed in a heap on the floor, flung unceremoniously from the bed, when we heard the laughter coming up the stairs. George swore and dropped his armful of shoes onto the floor, but there was nothing we could do about the room's state of transition. All our hopes of moving Angie's things before she and Fred got back from buying groceries were out the window now. We were caught.

The duo came up the stairs and rounded the corner right into the middle of our mess, and there was absolutely nothing to do but own it. George and I plastered matching disgustingly sweet fake smiles on our faces, and I even let out a nervous giggle and waved at the pair.

"Heeeeeey!" George beamed. "Did you…erm…did you remember milk?"

Fred stared wide-eyed and slack jawed at the mess we made – sheets piled in a heap on the floor, about five or six pairs of shoes scattered about, armoire doors wide open, the bed shoved halfway across the room to reveal a dusty patch of floor – but still answered. "Yeah. We got milk. I even, erh, even got you that…that…"

"Chocolate?"

"Yup. It was on sale."

While Fred was stunned, though, Angie was fuming. And she rightly guessed the mastermind behind this plan. Me. Who did she direct her anger at? Me. Nostrils flared, eyes narrowed, jaw set, and glaring at me. Right at me. She stared at the mess. And at me. Shoes. Me. Bed sheets. Me. Armoire. Me.

Of course I knew Angie's temper, and I knew going in to expect it, but I had really hoped to deal with it _after_ having the rooms arranged. Better to apologize after I had my way than to appease her in the middle of the process when she may demand to put everything back. After the rooms were rearranged, she would be piping mad but would deal with it. In the middle, anything could happen.

"Are you moving my things?" she demanded, eyebrows twitching.

"Mmmmmaybe?" I winced.

"_Why would you touch my stuff?_"

"Beeeeecause I want the room?"

"You can't _have_ the room, Mel. It's _mine_."

"You don't use it," I answered evenly, careful not to let a dangerous edge slip into my voice. Setting her off was the last thing I needed; Mount Angelina would blow any second anyway and did not need my help setting the eruption over the edge. "And I need somewhere to work."

"I need somewhere to _sleep_!"

I admit, the control she displayed over the volume of her voice was commendable. Personally, I had expected her to begin shouting as soon as she discovered our scheme, but Angelina showed a great deal of restraint that day. Venom laced her every over-punctuated word, but she had yet to shout.

Naturally, I tested just how far I could push this.

"I hear the left half of Fred's bed is quite comfortable these days. Or nights, rather." I wrinkled my nose and added, "The odd morning, maybe."

"Ewwwwww," George groaned, slapping a hand over his eyes as if that would help erase the mental image we would never be able to remove.

This officially broke Angie's resolve. She charged at me, stunning the boys, and I squealed and scrambled for the bed, narrowly rolling to the other side of it to use the piece of furniture as a buffer between us. "OUT! I WANT YOU OUT!"

"I want _you _out!" I countered, my voice sounding significantly less threatening much, much whinier. "You don't sleep here, anyway! You sleep with him!" I pulled out my wand and gestured towards Fred with it, but quickly pointed it at my best friend to defend against a spell she might fling my way with the wand she drew at that moment.

"Not every night, Mel! Now, put my room back together!"

"Well, you damn well should be sleeping with him every night!" I huffed, fixing my friend with, I imagine, a near-perfect replica of the exasperated look my mother gave me every time I did something she found utterly ridiculous. Which came up quite often. "Look at the boy, Angie! He's bloody gorgeous-"

"We-ell, hey, listen to that!" Fred grinned, slapping his brother proudly. "We're gorgeous!"

"-And you know I didn't always say that! If _I've_ come around, what is taking you so bloody long to wrap your head around this?"

"Wait." George held up a hand. "Can we back that up a bit?"

"You and Fred were snogging way back at the Yule Ball, and here we are _aaaaall_this time later, and you still refuse to admit to anybody that you like him! Just admit that you like him, Angie! You do the stupidest things with him, you spend the nights in his room, and then you turn around and tell me you're not his girlfriend? Get over yourself! You are!"

The wand pointed at me dropped as my best friend opened her mouth to say a thought that her mind could not quite form. This was rare, Angelina Johnson stunned into silence – maybe from the outburst itself or from the revelation happening inside her head – and I took advantage of it to unfairly pile on. Because, what kind of best friend would I be if I didn't make her feel as terrible as possible in front of the whole household in this, her most vulnerable of moments?

"You're afraid; that's why you won't do anything about Fred. And, frankly, I'm quite insulted, because I'm supposed to be the one who is afraid all the time. I never gave you permission to take that title. You are the brave one, Angie, the one with no qualms about trying to kill me over moving your shoes down the hall-"

"You could've at least asked first," she mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Fair enough," I agreed as I climbed onto the bed. I crawled across to sit on the edge on her side and patted the pair mattress next to me, where she then sat. "Now," I wrapped my arm around her waist, she did the same to me, and I tugged her over so her head rested on my shoulder, "let's call this what it is. You snog Fred. A lot. You sleep with Fred. A lot. You do stupid, mundane, domestic things with Fred, things like buying groceries and cleaning the bathroom and setting the table. A lot. You do stupid, mundane, domestic things _for _Fred. A lot. Like, picking up his laundry when he throws is aside and bringing him lunch at work and making him do the dishes when it's his turn. A lot. That's a relationship. That's what we do with guys we care about, Angie. And, frankly, it's ridiculous that you keep dancing around this because you're scared of, what? Of being attached to someone? Of becoming a monster-couple like George and me? Of not being independent? Believe me, it's not nearly as bad as you think."

Angie mumbled incoherently and buried her face in my shoulder. I nudged her with that arm to get her to repeat herself without my body as a blocker, but she cast a look at the boys. Of course. No more heart-to-heart with them still around. "Oy. Out," I ordered.

George gave me his wide, puppy-dog eyes. "You didn't always think I was gorgeous?"

"I'm very confused," Fred added. "Why are the bed linens on the floor?"

"_Out_!" I ordered, snapping my fingers. The twins grumbled and started to shuffle out, leaving empty-handed. "George!"

"What?!" he snapped from the hallway. "I'm leaving just like you told me to!"

"The shoes!" I turned to Angie and asked, "Can he take the shoes?" She nodded. "TAKE THE SHOES!"

"Right." He re-entered the room just in time for me to see his eye roll. "The shoes. Can't forget the shoes. Because that's what's important right now. Shoes."

"Just take them."

"I am!" he insisted with a little grin. "This is me. Taking the shoes. Doesn't it make me look manly? And _gorgeous_."

To help, I enchanted the last few shoes onto the pile in his arms so he could take them all in one trip. "Merlin, is this our new issues?" In response, he stuck his tongue out at me. Yes, I would spend a long time reassuring him that he was the most gorgeous man in the world, although doing that honestly after seeing Pierce Brosnan as James Bond could prove difficult. Not that George knew who Pierce Brosnan was. Or James Bond, for that matter.

I gently coaxed her into looking at me. "They're gone now, Angie, so you have to answer one question for me." The boys' voices carried down the hall to us, but couldn't quite be understood. Probably arguing about something ridiculous, knowing them, like which of them looked more gorgeous.

"Yes."

"Do…" I stopped and made a face. "I haven't…no, Angie, that's wrong, I haven't asked it yet. You can't answer if I haven't asked."

Angie huffed and sat up. "You're going to ask if I'm in love with Fred. Yes. I am. Figured I could save some time by just answering."

"See, you're clearly spending too much time with him. That was such a male thing to do, answering the question before I asked it." I shook my head. "Ridiculous. Disgusting. Preposterous!"

"You're just using big words now, show-off," Angie laughed.

I giggled and tugged on one of her braids. She retaliated by grabbing one of my curls, pulling it straight, and letting it spring back into place. Fully intending to escalate this into something completely ridiculous, I pulled on her braid again. As she reached for my hair, we heard the crash.

Mind you, we were used to crashes. Crashes happened all the time in that house. Experiments gone wrong. Potions misbrewed (not that that happened often!). Someone tripping. Customers knocking things over. In fact, it was an odd day when there were _no_ crashes in 93 Diagon Alley.

Our experience with bangs and shatters and explosions told us that this one was different. Dangerous, even. Angie and I listened to the silence that followed the series of sounds – _skwick, THWACK, whump whump whump whump whump, _"Ooof!"_, whubbathubthubthubthubababa_– stared at each other in shocked silence, and waited for the other to know what to do. Because, maybe the other person stuck in the room with no view of the hall had supernatural knowledge of this mysterious event.

"Little help!" Fred snapped, and that brought us back to attention. Angie and I rushed out into the hall, where Fred tried to help George sit up from his current position, sprawled on the floor in the doorway to Fred's (and Angie's) room.

"What happened?" Angie asked as I ran to George's side, kicking shoes and, for whatever reason, a large rubber ball out of my way in the process.

"Tripped on…" Fred looked around, found the ball bouncing down the hall, and pointed, "that. He hit his head on the doorframe on his way down and took a couple shoes to the head on top of it."

Suddenly, a dozen images of how this could go horribly wrong flashed through my mind, and I acted on what felt like the most logical solution. I shoved Fred away from George, which made him fall back down. That seemed preferably to agitating a neck injury, which I felt absolutely positive he had at the time. In fact, in the heat of the moment, I was convinced that George was dead. Clearly, he broke his neck and cracked his skull and was bleeding all over the floor even though I could clearly see that none of that was true. No, in my head, he was in grave danger at this moment. His life was in peril. Because he fell on a rubber ball.

"Are you all right? Where does it hurt? Angie, get some ice! Post the healers." I rammed my fingers into his shoulder. "Does this hurt?"

"No. Ow! Yes, it does! Mellie, calm down!" He pushed my hand away, grabbed Fred's wrist, and used his brother to pull himself up. "Mellie!" He snapped at me and pushed my hands away as I tried to urge him back down. "Mellie, I'm fine. I hit my head." He frowned at his brother and grumbled, "Does hurt, though."

That did it. Obviously, he had internal bleeding. His brain was swelling. A concussion. A hemorrhage. Amnesia. "How many fingers am I holding up? What's my name? What's _your_ name? Who's the minister?"

"Merlin," he groaned, massaging the back of his head gingerly.

"No, that's wrong!" I panicked, looking at Angie, who had not moved despite my earlier orders. "Angie, he thinks I'm Merlin!"

"I don't _quite_ think that's what he meant, Mel," she corrected.

George heaved a sigh and rattled off, "Melbecka Harper, George Weasley, Rufus Scrimgeour, and you have to hold up fingers for me to know how many there are."

"Right!" I shoved my hand in his face. "How many?"

"Gahhh…three." He pulled his head away sharply. "Mellie, would you please _breathe_? I'm the one that hit my head, not you. Could we at least pretend that I'm the one with the reason to be panicking right now?"

"Attention always has to be on her," Fred agreed. George shared a smile with his twin at my expense that, for whatever reason, actually helped calm me. Not entirely – growing up in a house where eating too fast brought on stories of how the greatest witch of her age died by accidentally swallowing too much cheese at once did quite a number on my nerves – but it did help. Years ago, a dear friend of mine tried to teach me to calm down by getting me to take a deep breath, hold it for ten long counts, and let it out very slowly and evenly. It apparently worked wonders for Cedric Diggory when he got flustered, but it only rarely and marginally helped me. Still, I tried it this time and found that it at least helped calm my rattled nerves to the point that I could take offense at the boys' mocking.

"Oh, honestly!" I huffed. "Sorry for being concerned."

"Apology accepted." George ignored the glare I shot at him. "Help me up?"

"Stay down!" I insisted. "You might not be dying, but you're probably concussed."

"She actually might be right about that," Angie piped up. I always could count on that girl to have my back. "Let's get him to his bed, and I'll take a look. You do think it's all right for me to heal him, yeah?" At first, I thought she might be mocking my admittedly-ridiculous fear of using wands to heal, but her face was the picture of sincerity. To be honest, while only George could ever use his wand to heal me up, Angie would be the next person I trusted. So, I nodded. "Good, then, let's take a look at him. He'll be just fine, Mel. He only hit his head. We all know there was nothing important up there."

* * *

**To let you know, school is starting for me again, so my posting might get a bit slower as I adjust back to dorms and classes and deadlines. I'll do what I can to keep the effects to a minimum!**

_**Next Chapter: The Descending Dark**_


	10. The Descending Dark

Hovering, I found, could be extremely unbecoming. There were few things worse than a gorgeous girl dressed for a beautiful night on the town standing around _hovering_. And Angelina Johnson was most certainly doing exactly that.

I carefully counted out a kindly wizard's change and handed it to him, reassuring him that his wife would absolutely love the Daydream Charms. George sat next to me behind the counter, working on a new batch of punching telescopes since there was very little else he could do. Angie had fixed up his head the night before, reassuring us both that he would be just fine, but he had been very quiet all day and felt it best if he just worked. It made me feel better, too, to have him sitting in one place. If there was any lasting damage, although I had no idea why there would be, running around the shop would only exacerbate it.

In a stunning ivory lace dress and some bright red heels, hair unbraided and pulled into a loose bun, Angelina looked stunning. She would have looked even more stunning, though, if she would only stand three or four feet farther away. Every time I moved, she would follow within a few seconds to stand just across the border of close and too close. And I did not like it. At first, I understood her nerves. Her first night sleeping with Fred followed by him announcing that he was taking her out to the theatre, in muggle London, to see _Les Misèrables_ since she did love the book so. How exactly he intended to pay for the tickets had been a bit of a joke with Angie and I throughout the day, down until the time came for her to get ready.

Because now, of course, it was real. She had a proper boyfriend, one she lived with, who took her to plays he would not understand because she would like them, who probably had to buy a muggle suit special for the occasion. And she seemed quite flustered by it.

"Angie!" I burst when I turned from the register and nearly crashed into her. "Honestly! Sit down. You're not glued to my hip."

"Sorry. Nervous," she mumbled, sliding onto the stool I wanted to sit on. Oh, well. Such is the price one pays to get the flittering idiot to settle. "Where _is_ he? We have to leave soon."

"He'll be here in plenty of time to Apparate there," George reminded her dully. I rarely interacted with him when he worked, but I took it as a sign of how focused he was on production that he sounded so distant and off-handed about it. Angie did as well, and she glanced towards the stairs but nodded.

"You're right, of course. Just don't want to miss the start."

"You won't." George continued to bend over his work, curled in the corner as if to take up as little space as possible. When he carefully prodded a telescope and had it punch out far more violently than any of our products should ever react, he swore and leapt away from the over-enchanted item, tripped over his stool, and would have fallen to the ground had Angie and I not quickly grabbed him. She had one of his arms, I had the other, and we awkwardly supported my love as his stool clattered to the ground and the telescope returned to its normal state with only minimal staring from nearby customers. "Shit," he swore again, staring dumbly at the now-immobile telescope. He looked at Angie, searching for some confirmation that this really just happened, found the appropriate shock on her face, and turned to me.

And then, he did something odd.

He ripped his arm out of my hands.

Now, he had been a bit off all day, but I thought very little of it until that moment when his eyes got so very dark and my fingernail ripped on a loose loop of magenta thread. Something was wrong, but I could not for the life of me figure out what it was.

So, in classic Harper fashion, I decided to smooth the problem over without addressing it. I reached to ruffle his hair, which he subtly dodged so my hand ended up on his shoulder in an oddly unromantic pat, and I faked some pep in my voice while asking, "How about I make an early dinner before you two lovebirds head out, huh?"

Angie pulled her thumb out of her mouth, frowned at the hangnail she had been chewing on, and told me, "We're eating out, actually. But thanks!"

"George?"

"Not hungry," he mumbled. He cautiously tapped the telescope with his wand, and, when it did not budge, picked it up without a fuss.

Well, fine. "You haven't eaten all day," I reminded him. "Not even a sandwich?"

"I said _I'm not hungry_!" he snapped. I supposed he felt Angie's wide eyes flitting between him and me as I gaped at him, the outburst freezing Fred halfway down the stairs so as not to enter in the middle of a volatile situation, because he let out a hefty sigh, squeezed his eyes shut, and ran his hand through his hair. When he spoke again, the edge was still in his voice, but he sounded much quieter and significantly calmer. "Make yourself something if you want."

"Careful, Mel," Fred warned, finally descending the stairs. "He may poison it if you turn your back."

"Yeah," Angie piped up, "what died in your porridge this morning, George?" She wrinkled her nose at her thumb, picked up her wand, and rid herself of the troublesome hangnail once and for all.

"Ah-ah, he didn't eat any porridge, remember, my lovely lady?" Fred reminded her. Angie tried to suppress her smile at the compliment, but her best efforts could not contain how happy such simple words made her. Seeing her look so beautiful and actually know it made me swell with pride, knowing I played at least a small role in bringing that joy to her face, and I smiled at the couple as they joined hands so naturally that they could have been doing it for years.

"Leave me alone," my dear dark cloud grumbled. "I've been busy working, unlike you three."

Fred let out a low whistle and gave me a wide-eyed head shake. "Good luck," he mouthed. I shrugged helplessly. He was in a funk, I thought. What could I do but stay out of his way?

So, the happy couple departed right around the time I locked up the shop, and George decided his work was not so vital that he could not help me clean up. We closed up in silence, though, that hung heavy in the air around us.

"Well," I announced with more fake cheer that George wrinkled his nose at, "I'm going to get out of this uniform!"

"Yeah," he sighed. "Me, too."

Progress. I saw this as a sign that he was not actively avoiding me, since we both had to head to our bedroom to change. Perhaps I should have been happy with that turn of events, but I could not pretend that everything was all right. So, I pushed my luck.

"George?" I asked tentatively as I pulled off the magenta shop robes and carefully hung them up. He glanced at me briefly to show I had his attention but continued changing wordlessly. "What's bothering you?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. I'm fine."

"No, you're not," I corrected gently. "Please tell me. I'm worried."

He hesitated, stopping with one arm in one of Fred's old Mrs. Weasley sweaters, deciding. Finally, he shook his head. "It's nothing."

"George, you bit my head off earlier over dinner."

"Yeeeeah," he tugged the shirt over his head, "I know. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I just want to know what's going on."

"Nothing," he insisted, leaning against the wall. "Just tired, I guess."

Liar. He knew I saw through it, but that did not motivate him to cover his tracks. Instead, he leaned against the wall as I finished changing into comfortable sleep pants and an oversized shirt that might have been his at one time but had found its way into my drawer. When I was done, I flopped on the bed and searched the nightstand for a hair tie.

"Y'know, though, it's interesting," George mused, watching me carefully. The way his eyes narrowed made me shift uncomfortably in my seat, because George normally did not look that way when he found things interesting. This look was far too serious. "I had the strangest dream last night."

"Really?" I raised my eyebrows. "What of?"

"I dunno. You and me. Talking. About _things_."

I rolled my eyes. "All right, I'll bite. What kind of things were we talking about, George?"

"Oh, you know," he shrugged, although he had to be aware that I certainly did _not_ know. "Tea. And sleeping. And stubbing your toe."

My heart stopped. This sounded dangerous. This sounded _very_ dangerous. It flirted perilously close with a conversation George should not be dreaming about. "You have…very dull dreams."

"Yeah, it was pretty dull. But it got more interesting."

"D-did it?" There must have been ten hair ties on that blasted night stand in the morning, but, damn it all, I could not find a single one now.

"Yup. But, it was just a dream, right? Nothing to worry about."

The tension finally snapped in my head, and I slammed my hands down on the nightstand, the lamp teetering dangerously but not falling. "What are you getting at, George? What are you trying to say?"

George shrugged again and pushing himself off of the wall. "I remember." My stomach dropped. "And I don't know if I'm more upset that you drugged me or that you couldn't tell me otherwise."

"George…"

"You're going to _die_, Mel!" he shouted at me, and I flinched at the anger he never ever showed me. "You and Fred are going to… and you couldn't even tell me!" He slapped his hand against our dresser. "All the times I ask what's on your mind, why you can't sleep, what's bothering you, and you just tell me to trust you. How the hell am I supposed to trust you when you…" he cut himself off before he got even more upset. Slowly, he took one, two deep breaths to steady himself, and the voice that came out next was much quieter but not at all calmer. "If you needed to tell me that badly, you should have just _told_ me. I understand that you keep your secrets. You should have just kept it to yourself if you didn't want me to know. It's the lies that piss me off."

"George, I'm…"

He held a hand up to silence me. "No, Mel. It's all…no, you know what? It's _not_ all right," he shook his head, changing his mind about forgiving me. "It's _not_. I'm, I'm _really_ upset. I know you don't tell me the things you Know, and I've learned to deal with that. But deciding to tell me as long as I've drunk some potion so I won't remember? That's a whole…how could you do that?"

Words had never failed me before, but as I looked at the hurt in George's eyes, the hurt he would not let show on his face, they finally did. I had no answer for him. How _could_ I do that? How could I be so horrible to the man I loved?

"Yeah, I didn't think you'd have an answer." George shook his head and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "If Freddy asks, tell him I went for a walk."

He brushed by me on his way downstairs, not apparating out of the room probably for the dramatic effect watching him leave had on my heart. It was clear I was not to follow him, but he did not need to make that so obvious; I did not want to follow. I wanted to find a dark corner, curl up, and die.

How could I have been so stupid?

It vaguely occurred to me several times in the next few hours that I should get up, but it never quite seemed worth it. What would I do? Where would I go? George was gone, probably for good, and I could not see the point of moving anymore. I would stand up so I could…what? Pack my things? Wash the dried tears off of my cheeks? Get some food to silence my rumbling stomach? What good would any of that do when George was gone? So, I sat on the bed and stared at the doorway he had vanished through. I watched the shadows grow longer and longer, the natural light pouring through the windows get dimmer and dimmer.

At some point when the room was the translucent grey of dusk, my stomach twisted into an unbearable knot, and I felt so very, very cold, as if the very marrow of my bones had turned to ice. A symptom of a broken heart, I decided. I Knew that was wrong, of course, but I was just so numb and so broken and so exhausted that I could not think about what it really meant. What else could the world pile on that point?

Fred and Angie came back shortly after I realized just how dark the bedroom had gotten. Something about their laughter echoing through the open door snapped me out of my frozen state, and I looked up from my hands in time to see Angie poke her head in our room. His room. It probably wasn't mine anymore.

"Godric, Mel, would it kill you to turn on a…" she flicked the light on and instantly forgot her complaint. "Mel?"

Bless her. For all the ways she could irritate me and put me at my wits end, there was a reason Angelina Johnson was like a sister to me. She could take just one look at me and tell something was horribly wrong. That night, she was at my side in an instant, wrapping me in her arms so I could cry on the shoulder of her ivory dress. I would ruin it, so I tried to push her away, but Angie had the grip of a bear trap and refused to let me budge. So, since she seemed set on it, I let out a pathetic wail that brought Fred running in from the other room and started sobbing. All the tears that I held in since George left, too numb to let them out, came tumbling down to ruin Angie's beautiful dress and thoroughly dampen their lovely evening.

Fred sat on the other side of me on the bed and rubbed my back as I bawled, probably looking to Angie for an explanation that she could not give. This was my family, though, letting me cry without asking questions, murmuring soothing words and stroking my hair and rocking me gently.

I did not have to say what happened, which I could not have done fully anyway. They just knew. As my tears devolved into pathetic hiccups, they shared a look and together said, "George," in a way that told me they were not asking; they were just letting me knew they understood. So, I merely nodded.

"S…'s m-m-my…my f-fault," I stammered. Fred shushed me and offered a tissue, which I snatched greedily to blow my nose with.

"He shouldn't make you cry," he grumbled. "It can't have been so bad that you deserve to cry like this."

Except that it was.

"We'll talk to him, Mel," Angie assured me. I shook my head, but she only chuckled at me. "It's not your call, dearie. I have to hurt him for making you cry. That's the way this works, and he knows that…really? Are you so popular you need mail at midnight?"

Angie snapped her fingers and pointed at the window, so Fred let out a groan and opened it up so Wooster could flap inside. My owl very rarely stopped by the house at night; we had a very happy relationship as long as we saw very little of each other. Tender twelve year old Melbecka managed to fall in love with the most ornery, persnickety, and narcissistic owl around, but ours was a love made fonder by distance. Anyone hurt my pet, I would kill them, but I cursed his name about as often as he sent me death glares. Oh, yes, owls can send death glares. Trust me.

I took the letter from Wooster and, when he did not immediately fly away, stroked his head. This was too much love between us, so he nipped the air near my wrist in warning. I got the hint and pulled my hand away; I needed it to open the letter anyway.

"Well, I know it's hardly important, but we had an awfully good time at the show tonight," Angie offered.

I didn't care.

Words like _attack _and _condolences_ and _funeral_ buzzed through my brain, transporting me to a world far removed from my friends. They had no idea how things had changed in this simple moment. If only I had listened to that Feeling I had earlier, the one I wrote off as my personal grief. Not that I could stop anything. It was too late. But at least I would have Known. That was my thing, wasn't it? _She will know death_. It always Felt different when someone was about to die, colder and heavier and more intense. And, like a shallow fool, I chose to ignore it.

"Yeah!" Fred piped up. He rubbed the back of his head, a habit he and his brother were forming when thrust into awkward situations with girls. "It was…it was _lovely_!"

Normally, I would have wanted every detail. Hell, even considering what happened with George, I would have loved the diversion. But not now. Not with the letter I held in my hand. I stood up suddenly and made for my closet, grabbing my suitcase and throwing it on the bed where I had been moments ago. Angie jumped away in one direction, Fred in the other, and both gawked at me as I enchanted my things into the bag.

"Mel, it's not that bad!" Fred insisted. "He'll come 'round!"

"This isn't about George," I told them. "It's my mum."

"Oh, Mel," Angie rolled her eyes and laughed a little, "I promise you, there are no termites in Diagon Alley to eat through the foundation of the building and send it crashing down around us."

Count on Angie to give me something _else_ to keep me up at night. "It's not about termites." Though, I would never get that thought to quite leave me head. I grabbed one of George's sweaters and threw it in my bag; it may not be mine, and I may not be in the position to just take his things willy-nilly, but I would need the comfort of his scent in the days to come.

"What does she want, then?" Angie asked. "Stop, would you just stop?" She grabbed my wrists so I stopped frantically checking the contents of my bag. "What does she want?"

I yanked my wrists free and shoved my hair out of my face. For the second time in as many days, I called upon Cedric's method of taking a very deep breath, hold it while counting to ten, then let it out slowly. I tried that, but it seemed to do very little to stop the shaking taking over my body.

"She doesn't want anything, Angie. She's been killed."

* * *

_**Next Chapter: The Scents of Knowle St. Giles**_


	11. The Scents of Knowle St Giles

Many people commented that, upon leaving home, they would return expecting to ease right back into their old lives – sleeping in their former bedrooms, eating at the same spot at the kitchen table – only to find that their bedroom now housed a splendid array of finches and their old photos were in boxes and their dog barked at them as fiercely as he would a burglar.

Not in my case.

It had been nearly a year since I last set foot in my childhood home, but the only differences in the house were the ones I had made. The items I took to start my life in Diagon Alley were obviously missing, but nothing new had taken their place. This much was evident on the front porch, where the porch swing swayed in the autumn breeze looking absolutely uninviting without its throw pillows and handmade blanket. They were in my bedroom – George's bedroom – in the flat. Mum never replaced them.

The Dark Mark still lingered in the dawn air above my childhood home, faded but still so clearly holding its evil shape. The muggle residents of Knowle St. Giles would spend years trying to explain the odd cloud formation that occurred the day my mother was tragically killed in a home invasion, which was how they explained it. A home invasion. A burglary gone wrong. It seemed almost comical, the simplicity to their lives. They were involved in this mess, too, yet they had no idea. They busied themselves with shoveling last night's snowstorm off of the walk, shovels scraping against concrete when they finally dug through the last few inches of it.

I stood there on the walk, staring at the untouched porch, the green snake slicing through the clouds above, until Angie appeared at my side with our bags. She had insisted on coming with me to do this. Fred wanted to be there, too, but then who would run the shop? No, the whole family could not come to pack up my old home. This was something I really ought to do on my own. I just knew I could not.

In those few long moments outside, I noticed and remembered the strangest things. Angelina's parents still had their Christmas wreath hanging on the door, its bright red bow a bright contrast against the dark blue door. My mother had not picked up our mail that day, her last day. I did. The electric bill, a catalogue, and an advertisement for a new auto detailing place. As if my mother would ever drive a car. Though, if she did, I suppose she would be all about getting every nook and cranny of it cleaned.

The first difference to the house hit me when I walked in the front door. It was in the air. Death. I knew that feeling – the heaviness and the stale, stagnant taste in my mouth. I felt the same way at Hogwarts before I left my last year. I felt it in the Department of Mysteries. And now, I felt it here. I felt it at the coat rack, where my mother's beige slicker and black umbrella and wide-brimmed hat hung above a pair of dark blue wellies, one of which had tipped over to lay across the crimson entry rug. When I lived her, I would have kicked it aside, but now I felt the need to step over it, to leave everything exactly how I found it until it was time to pack up my mother's belongings.

A half-filled teacup still rested on the coffee table in the living room next to the decorative bowl of potpourri she always had out, this one smelling of vanilla and cinnamon and berries. The tellie was on, playing news now, but I could just imagine it had been tuned to EastEnders or one of her other shows at the time. The Western Gazette rested next to the teacup, opened to the crossword. She never got the Daily Prophet for fear _they_ could trace it back to us. Fat lot of good that did her.

I could follow the trail perfectly by the path of destruction through the house. It started small and grew and grew and grew, painting a vivid image in my mind of what it could have been like for her. She sat there, on the couch, where I sat as Angie watched helplessly from the doorway, drinking her tea and watching her show and filling in the crossword during the adverts. There was a noise at the back door, a loud one probably, and she stood up suddenly, spilling a few drops of tea that had now permanently stained the wooden surface. She crossed the room quickly, knocking her copy of _Moby Dick_ off of the armchair's seat cushion as she passed, sending the book pages-down to the ground. I picked it up, returned her bookmark snugly between the pages, unfolded the few corners that creased from being unceremoniously shoved to the ground, and returned it to the chair.

She could tell by this point that it was serious, maybe from taunting voices or a feeling in the air. She fumbled for her wand, hidden in the vase on the end table. It fell in her haste, shattering to the ground, sending the bouquet of red roses to the ground. She ran over them as she entered the dining room, tearing off petals and grinding them into the carpet. As I scooped up the petals, I could tell by their scent that they were recently purchases to replace the last dying flowers. She always had to have fresh roses.

I pushed the ajar door open more to enter the dining room and continue on her journey. Here, I imagine she came face to face with them. Spells flew, chairs toppled, pictures went up in flames, the china cabinet's glass and contents lay in pieces all across the room. But, she got away. She hit the ground here, a quarter of the way across the room where the blood started, maybe injured by a spell or tripping over a chair. She cut her hands or her knees or both or something else entirely, and bled on the hardwood floor as she crawled to the kitchen door. Leaving a slick trail behind her that I followed even as last night's dinner threatened to come back up if I continued.

The wall of our dining room jutted out to form a corner that hid the door to the kitchen from sight. When I rounded that corner expecting to find the old white door, I found nothing more than shattered wood and a doorknob holding on by the latch. As if someone blasted their way through. As if she crawled through, closed the door, locked it, and did not think to use her magic to seal it. And they broke their way in. The kitchen lay in ruins, the only sign that it had ever been used for cooking being the charred remnants of a refrigerator and stove. The back door was still open from their entrance. I carefully walked over to it, stepping around splinters of the former door to close it. The door to the fridge hung bent on its hinges, swinging back and forth, back and forth in a breeze I did not feel. Our table was nothing more than a pile of wood, and, as I crossed to inspect the small stream of water spewing from where the faucet snapped off, I felt it. I felt the spot. The spot where they killed her. It hit me like a brick, cold and heavy and suffocating. Until that point, it had all been speculation. The blood in the dining room was _probably_ hers. The door _probably _splintered from the Death Eaters forcing entry. The vase _probably _broke as she hastily grabbed her wand. Probably. Probably. Probably. But this was real. Real. Real. Real. This was really where she died. I Felt it. I Knew.

That was where Angie found me, curled in a ball in that spot, clinging to yesterday's mail as my only lifeline, rocking back and forth, refusing to cry. Unable to cry. I had never been so overwhelmed that I did not know what to do, but, at that moment, my body was torn between vomiting out everything I had eaten in the past week and crying out all the liquids I could spare to lose and then some.

I will spare us both the wretched details of the next few hours, how we sat in silence in that room, staring at the destruction; how Angie led me to the living room where I flipped off the tellie and mopped up the tea and swept away the broken vase and ruined roses; how I got overwhelmed in the dining room and collapsed in the doorway, causing Angie to silently promise she would take care of that room for me; how she got me upstairs, which was perfectly untouched, as if nothing evil or even mildly impure ever happened here.

Suffice to say, I eventually found myself, still unable to cry, in the attic. This was the easiest place to start, since everything up here already came in a box. All I had to do was open it up, see if I wanted the contents, and close it back up. I already knew I would want very little. I did not want memories of this place. Neither my mother nor I had been up there in quite a while, so the boxes and loose items had a fine layer of dust covering them. The air smelled musty, causing Angie to sneeze a few times until she adjusted to it. I pulled the heavy drapes aside to let the evening light in through the big bay window we covered long ago, seeing no sense in advertising the storage, and rays of sunlight illuminated the dust particles swimming through the air.

I dropped to my knees in front of a pile of boxes, the only boxes I figured I would want. The photographs. The old photographs my mother never acknowledged having but would never get rid of. Photographs of her glory days, at Hogwarts and with my father and barely pregnant with me and her wedding and her childhood. Photographs of my father growing up and of vacations in Australia. Albums upon albums.

As I flipped quickly through the pages, most engrained in my memory from spending rainy childhood Saturdays going through them, I finally spoke. "The Carrows did this, you know."

"Mel, we can't be sure," Angie said gently as she peered at a box of moth-eaten baby clothes. "We're getting rid of these."

I pulled out the thick green album I spent most of my childhood looking through. It had always been my favorite, and my body seemed to automatically want to flip through the pages and pages of photographs memorializing my parents last year at Hogwarts. I had a particularly fondness for seeing them so young, carefree, and in love. So untroubled. I flipped through the pages without seeing, the pictures already well-known to me, until one that I must have seen dozens of times caught my eye and stopped my progress.

"Get rid of all of it," I told her. "And we can be sure. They killed my father. And they found her. They must have."

"How? Mel, she's been in hiding for years."

That was when I realized how different being a Ravenclaw made me. I could put the pieces together so much quicker than the rest could. They may chalk it up to paranoia or fear or whatever term may make them feel better, but I knew what was going on here, and no one could tell me otherwise. The Order may never believe me, but as I stared at the familiar picture of my father at Hogwarts, laughing at one of the long tables of Hogwarts's Great Hall, flanked by comrades I had only seen in a vastly different context before now, I knew the answer. How many times had I flipped past this photo without realizing its implications? How many times had I looked without seeing?

"Me."

Angie huffed. "Mel, that's ridi-"

"Don't tell me I'm being ridiculous, Angie, because I'm right. Bellatrix Lestrange knew who I was in the Department of Mysteries. Sort of. She and Lucius Malfoy knew my mother in school. Look, see?" I held up the picture in my hand. "And they knew my father."

Angie crossed the attic swiftly and snatched it from me to look at how a very young Lucius Malfoy seemed practically chummy with my father, and the young man and woman on the other side laughed and leaned in dramatically to be sure they were in the shot. My dad tried to shove them away, which Lucius seemed to find hilarious.

"You know who those two are, right?" Angie nodded at my question. Of course she did. The faces of all Death Eaters were permanently etched in our minds. I said it anyway, though, in case she was only humoring me. "The Carrows. He knew them. Angie, look, they were his friends. It makes sense; they were in the same house at about the same time, though I think they might've been slightly older than him. And when I showed up at the Department of Mysteries and they heard the name Harper, it wouldn't take long to figure out my mother, their old classmate and his girlfriend, was still in England. And they probably assumed I would be here, too, and they could finished what they started all those years ago." I licked my lips. "He knew them and was friends with them. Think of what that means." That they betrayed him. That he either betrayed them or, in a backwards way, us. That my father may have been a Death Eater.

Angie considered this, staring at the picture. Then, slowly, very slowly, she looked at the album I pulled it from. She reached out and slid out the picture next to it, one of my parents together on the wooden bridge at Hogwarts as a light snow fell in the distance. Their arms wrapped around each other's waists, my mother bundled in a Hufflepuff scarf and a beautiful black sweater with the school crest on it and a radiating smile and my father in a simple heather grey coat and his hair all messy and love in his eyes. Angie handed that to me, folded the picture of the Carrows, and pocketed it.

"Remember your father that way. This," she pointed to her pocket, "is something we need to figure out. Later"

I nodded. I liked that thinking. At the moment, I liked any thinking that was not my own. My mind felt thick and heavy and muddled, like I was wading through a dense fog or my late grandmother's pea soup.

"I don't want anything," I announced, hugging the photo album to my chest. "Just these."

"Are you certain?" Angie frowned. "Mel, there's a lot to go through, I know, but we have time."

"I don't want it," I repeated seriously. "I want the photographs. That's all. The rest was…hers. Not mine. I don't want it now."

Angie studied me carefully, biting her bottom lip and furrowing her brow as her eyes scanned over me. I can only imagine what she saw. A trembling girl too old to be in school but too young to face the horrors of the real world. A girl clutching to an old album in a dusty attic standing in front of a window that could stand a good cleaning. A girl with wide eyes and quivering lips pressed together in an attempt to stabilize them and shallow breaths desperate for cool, fresh air that could not be achieved with the weight of the world now thrust on her shoulders.

"Why don't we wait, yeah?" Angie suggested. "It's getting late. I'll make us some dinner…" she frowned. "I think my mum said something about going there to eat, actually." Yeah, because there was no chance I would eat Angie's attempt at a meal. "And we can sleep this off. Tomorrow'll be a fresh day. Sound good?"

I nodded. It all sounded good. It sounded wonderful. Except that a fresh day would not be enough to rid this house of its demons. It may help, but I still would not want anything. I still would not be ready to box up my mother's possessions, to clean the kitchen, to pick up the remnants of a disrupted life. How could I put that into words for someone who had never seen death, though?

The closest I could manage was, "I'm not hungry."

I told her to go eat. I wanted to be alone for a while, and, after much cajoling, finally got her to go to her parents' house for dinner without me. I ventured into my mother's room, heavily shadowed as the sun began to set, and stared at her favorite bedspread – the one with the ivy pattern. My fingers trailed along the polished wood of her dresser, and I pulled open a drawer to stare at the sweaters and blouses and socks and underwear inside. For no reason. Just to see them. Her locket lay on her nightstand, a tarnished gold oval engraved with a triquetra that looked like it was formed from branches or twigs. I could remember playing with that locket as a child as it hung around her neck, but she stopped wearing it after my father died. Gently, as if it might break, I picked it up and clicked it open.

My mother smiled back at me. Not as I knew her, because I never knew an Adelaide Harper that smiled broadly. No, this was a girl, barely older than me. A girl with raven curls, just like mine, and blushing cheeks and bags under her eyes. Slinging his arm over her shoulder was a man about her age. A yawning man with a day's worth of stubble on his unshaven chin and a light in his green eyes and an infant in his arms. Me.

I clicked the locket shut and latched it around my neck. I would keep that, too. With my decision made, I drifted to my old bedroom, left untouched as if no atrocities had occurred in this house. Angie must have dropped my suitcase there earlier, though I had never noticed, as it sat on the rocking chair next to the bed. I opened it, stared at the sleep clothes I brought, and realized I did not have the energy to change. I felt exhausted. I had done absolutely nothing that day, just walked around a house, but I could no longer stay standing.

George's red sweater, emblazoned with a golden G boldly across the front, called to me from the top of the suitcase. I grabbed it and crawled onto my old bed, not bothering with the covers. I did not mind the chill of night settling through the house mostly because I was too numb to feel it. I closed my eyes, hugged his sweater to my chest, took a deep breath to fill my nose with his scent, and pretended that he was there with me.

* * *

**Sorry for dumping you on a cliffhanger last time! I know this still isn't the greatest spot, but at least it's a little better, yeah? I'm back at school now, so life is a little crazy, and I don't know when the next post will be. Hopefully pretty soon, because I know the timing of this part of the story and slow posts is terrible. I'll do my best!**

_**Next Chapter: I Miss You Like Hell**_


	12. I Miss You Like Hell

_Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. -Edna St. Vincent Millay_

I woke up to the sound of a teacup clinking onto my nightstand. Immediately, my eyes flung open as I fumbled for the wand that was far from my side. It was this time, though, accidentally locked up in my trunk. Across the room. Far, far away, leaving me vulnerable in this most vulnerable of times.

This potential attacker, though, came not to kill but to bring tea. "Blueberry. One sugar. Splash of cream. Drink up," Angie ordered. "You haven't had anything to eat or drink since you got the news."

"M'not thirsty," I croaked, my voice giving away the lie. Rather, my throat felt raw and as cracked as untouched bar soap. I really could use the tea, and my stomach gurgled its discontent at a full day and a half without any food. "Or hungry. Let me sleep."

"It's after ten. Do you want to sleep the whole day away?"

I wanted to sleep my whole life away, and I think the look I gave her said as much.

Angie sank onto the bed next to me and soothingly brushed my hair off of my forehead. "Why don't you drink your tea here in bed while I make you up a bath, yeah? And while you clean up, Mum and I will fix you some bacon and toast."

I did not want to do any of that, but my body answered instead of my brain, so I found my head nodding instead of shaking. Angie gave me a soft smile with far too much pity in it, and she helped shift the pillows behind me so I could sit up. I grudgingly took the tea from her outstretched hands and drank up.

My morning ran on momentum. As much as I did not want to do anything, once I started, it was easy to keep going. Angie's list of tasks – drink tea, take a bath, eat breakfast – seemed dauntingly impossible as I lay in bed, but once I actually sat up and finished my delicious tea, I found that the bathroom was not that far away. The warm water helped wash some of the fuzz from my mind, although it could not completely snap out of the fog the past few days had filled me with. And, I had to admit, it felt awfully good to have clean hair. Smelling of lavender and vanilla, toweled off and dressed in some clean muggle jeans and George's sweater, my stomach grumbled so loudly that I had no choice but to follow Angie next door to her parents' house for breakfast.

Her mother, bless her, kept conversation light as I mechanically chewed and swallowed and chewed and swallowed. She talked about how the muggles were upset over the poor response of the street plows in the last snow storm. They were predicting another in a few days' time, and the whole street bemoaned another day of being forced to call off work because the school bus could not pick up the kids and their little cars could not conquer the snow. The Hanovers were moving to Cardiff, poor things, because of Mr. Hanover's job. The price of milk went up again. Turtlenecks were quite the fashion item this winter, especially in colors like turquoise and hot pink.

I really didn't care. But, Merlin, I was so glad she kept talking. Otherwise, we would have just sat there in silence as I chewed and swallowed and chewed and swallowed, because everyone knew I had nothing to say.

What was I supposed to talk about? _"Oh! Did I tell you how my boyfriend left me because I told him his twin brother and I are going to be killed but slipped a potion in his tea so he wouldn't remember, but a blow to the head made him remember anyway? That was brill! And, then, guess what? My mum was murdered. And I have to clean up the place. I don't know what to do with all her things. I can't sell it all. It's _hers_. I don't want or need any of it, but how can I give it to perfect strangers? What am I supposed to do with it all? I can't let it sit in that big old ruined house. I can't get rid of it. I can't ask George. What do I do? Do you know what to do?"_

So, I listened to the neighborhood gossip. I ate my bacon, spread jam on my toast, had some more tea (not blueberry this time, but still good). I offered to help clean up, but Mrs. Johnson refused. I pretended not to see the looks passed between my best friend and her mother during the silences of our half-hearted conversation. I did not need to acknowledge their pity. I knew it was there. _Poor Mel. All she's been through. It's a wonder she can even stand. And George, not even here to help her. What could have happened, d'you think? To set him off like this. Poor Mel. Poor dear. So fragile to begin with. Hasn't been quite right since Cedric died, and now all this. It's a wonder…_

I found that the Johnsons' house felt just as suffocating as my mother's, and I much preferred a house that felt of death to one that reeked of pity. Death, that I Knew. That was sort of my thing at this point. I could handle it because I knew I could not change it. The dead could not be brought back; Death could not be removed from the air. The dead could not be changed. Pity came from the living, and the living could always be changed. You could grab the living, shake them, yell at them, scream, tell them to stop, beg them. But the worst part of pity is that your best efforts only made it worse. The more you tried to prove you did not need it, the more of it you got. _Look at how strong she's trying to be. Poor thing. Feels like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. No one should have to deal with so much, so young. Poor thing_. You couldn't escape it. Like a disease.

But, the house did not help. Angie spent last night working some wonderful magic to clean up downstairs so it looked as if nothing ever happened there, but I saw the blood on the floor even though it was gone, saw the splintered wood where there stood a pristinely repaired one. The kitchen looked spotless, although there was absolutely no furniture in it. We would have to buy new appliances before I could sell the house. I had to do that, of course. I could not keep it. I could never be here again.

"Oh, Mum," I breathed, standing in The Spot in the middle of the gutted kitchen.

I felt him before I saw him, knowing that someone stood behind me, changing the feel of the air around me in the way only he could. I would have run to him, but so much had changed in the last two days that I was no longer sure I was allowed to do that, so I stayed put.

Truth be told, I wanted to be mad at him. I wanted to be furious that he never even tried to see my side of it and condemned me so strongly that I hated myself for it. After all, the idea had enough merit to it that I did decided telling him about Fred and my fates but not letting him remember was worth doing. There was a reason for it, and I knew it had to be strong for me to act on it. If only I could remember why. And I wanted to hate him for making me feel the way he did, so broken and alone.

I couldn't.

I could only be mad at myself. I could only hate myself. I could only miss him and wish he was here to tell me I could get through this and help me figure out what to do next and hold me so I could finally cry.

"Mellie."

The sound of his voice, strong and so familiar, filling the silence was too much for me. I had to squeeze my eyes shut against a spell of light-headedness brought on by all the changes around me – George back, the kitchen empty, Mum gone. Suddenly, eating all that food seemed like such a terrible idea. There was a very strong chance it would just end up right on the floor.

Knowing I was completely overwhelmed, George cleared across the kitchen and caught my waist, engulfing me from behind. I immediately spun in his grasp and buried my face in his chest, and let my hands roam his back to make sure he was there. I needed to feel him, feel how solid and human and alive he was, to be sure he was really there. After a deep breath that filled my nose with his scent, which his old sweater could only barely compensate for, I let out a garbled sob and sank into him. To support me and keep me standing, he squeezed my waist even tighter to the point of bordering on uncomfortable, but I did not mind. I liked the bit of pain, the constricted airflow, because at least I could feel something. And with George there, holding me up, rocking me slowly back and forth as my knees refused to keep my legs straight, I felt so much. I felt everything.

"I'm so sorry," I heard him murmur. Whether he was sorry for leaving or for fighting or for what happened to my mother, I didn't know and I didn't care. He was finally with me, and that was all that mattered.

"I-I…" I tried, but there were too many things to say and no way for me to calm enough to say anything. I love you, I'm sorry, I can't bear for you to ever leave me again, I understand if you still hate me, I miss her so much, I think my heart is actually physically broken, I am so glad you're here.

"Shhhh," he hushed. He planted a soft kiss on my temple and then pressed his cheek to that spot. "It's all right. I'm here. I love you. I'm not going anywhere. Everything's all right."

Very few things were all right. My mother was dead. The Carrows knew I was alive and were probably actively searching for me, or at least had plans to kill me if we ever crossed paths. I had a funeral to arrange and a house to pack up and sell. I couldn't even remember the last time I told her that I loved her.

At least one thing _was_ all right, though. George was there, and, as he said, he was not going anywhere. He still loved me. He forgave me. Knowing that, I could get through this. Knowing that, I could get through anything.

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG 

My mother, it turned out, had very few friends due to her life of seclusion. In fact, she had two. And that, perhaps, hurt more than her actual death. Knowing that there were so few people to remember her. Her funeral mainly consisted of people coming for me, not for her. The Weasleys came, of course, making up most of the crowd around the hole in the ground that looked simultaneously much too big for such a small woman and much too small to contain an entire life. Ron could not make it, of course, and Percy wasn't there, either, but the rest of the family was, including Fleur. Angie stood by Fred's side, her parents next to her. Our core group of the Order – Moody and Lupin and Tonks and Kingsley – also came.

The rest, I admit, surprised me. I was not aware of the story in the Daily Prophet, since I stayed fairly secluded in the days following my mother's death, but word spread in the wizarding world, as word often does. Katie and Alicia and Cho sent flowers since they could not get time away from school. Some of my fellow Ravenclaw alum showed up, Bradley and Chambers standing side-by-side as they had in their Hogwarts days with their hair combed and their faces uncharacteristically somber; I was not used to seeing them doing anything other than laughing or tearing down the Quidditch pitch. Roger Davies came, too, and stood with them since he knew precious few others.

Perhaps the most surprising attendants, though, stood not far from me as I watched my mother's casket get lowered into that massively small hole. Amos Diggory stood with his arm around his wife, a small beacon of strength in this day of confusion. Yes, George kept my hand firmly clamped in his, tightening his grip when my hand wavered or a fresh round of tears began, but there was only so much a man who had never lost a loved one could do. The Diggorys, though, understood. They knew what this moment was like, the burial of one taken long before the proper time, taken violently and senselessly for knowing the wrong person and being in the wrong place. So, having them there gave me something no one else could.

Hope.

Hope that this would get better. Hope that this_ had_ to get better. Not just the pain, but the world, because how many people could suffer like this before something had to give?

* * *

**Sorry for the delay, everyone! School is…ugh, well, it's school. Papers and reading (so…much…reading…) and work and yuck. I don't have a title for the next chapter yet, either, so sorry I can't give you that right now. Thank you all for the wonderful reviews, and the angst will let up soon. This isn't going to be one massive downer, honest!**


	13. Sticky Situations

"Why is the counter sticky?"

George offered a boyish grin and wrapped his arms around my waist, successfully pinning my arms at my sides so I could not touch the sales counter again. That only made me more suspicious of the sticky patch I had just touched while trying to count the money for the night.

"What say we go out for dinner? Doesn't that sound lovely? Get out of the shop for a bit! You've had a trying couple weeks!"

"Don't try to distract me," I ordered, although I had to admit the prospect of not cooking sounded lovely. The few weeks since my mother's funeral had provided a significant improvement over my mood, though I did still find myself slipping into a darkness that not even George could pull me from. Being back home with my family, my mother's possessions packed safely away to deal with in the future, made me feel lighter. "Why is the counter sticky?" George's eyebrows knitted together in clearly-feigned confusion. "Fred," I looked around for his accomplice to no avail. "Frederick Gideon Weasley!"

"Whaaaat?" The whine drifted from the back of the shop, and a shock of ginger hair burst up from in between two displays. "I'm trying to straighten up!"

"Why is the counter sticky?"

There it was. The look. The look that passed between Fred and George when they made a silent agreement over something. Eyes locked for half a second too long, jaws just a fraction too tight, the hint of a question on the face of one, the slightest nod of the head from the other.

This was a conspiracy.

"George!" I tried to wriggle free of his arms, but he recognized the accusation in my tone and instantly tightened his grip. That only made me struggle harder, jumping up and throwing my weight fully back against him in hopes of throwing him off balance enough that he let go. When that did not work, I tried again, this time kicking out for extra "umph". Again, no success, but I continued trying, adding some arm action as well. The ensuing scuffle knocked over both stools and backed us several paces away from the suspiciously sticky counter. "Let me go!"

"Ca-ugh-calm _down_!" he grunted, fighting to keep me in his tight grip. "Woman, would you settle?!"

With a huff, I landed on my feet and obligingly stayed put. He still held me tight, just in case I launched another attack (which I admittedly had planned), but allowed himself a heavy sigh.

"You slay me. Now, what is all this about?"

"THE COUNTER!"

At my outburst, he instinctively tightened his grip, and I let out a yelp at the pinching pressure on my stomach. "Sorry," he muttered, loosening significantly. "What about the counter?"

"Oh, honestly!" I heaved. He allowed me to wriggle free, and I grabbed my face in exasperation. "The counter. Is sticky. You two. Did something. To it. What?"

The boys looked to each other again, but I refused to let them wall me out like I knew they planned to. I whirled on Fred, who I knew to be the weaker link, I pointed as menacingly as I could. Time to pull out the ultimate threat.

"I could ask Angie."

One could practically see his resolve crack at the thought of his sick girlfriend hauling herself out of bed to settle this. She already wanted to murder the lot of us for making her spend the day with her cold, but I really had no time to brew her a Pepperup until the shop closed; with one cauldron locked up on the Polyjuice and the boys desperately needing a restocking, I could only do so much. I might be a witch, but I never claimed to be a miracle worker. And telling Angie that she needed to come solve the mystery of the sticky counter with her nose plugged and throat sore and eyes watery would only spell disaster for one of us. My money was on Fred. My money was always on Fred when Angie's wrath was involved.

"N…aaaah, well, ya' see," Fred began. George slapped his hands over his face, and I grinned triumphantly. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. "We were experimenting with this new product at lunch, see, and…erm…"

I held my hand up to silence him. "Say no more, dear. Just clean it up. I'm not touching it."

"I don't want to clean it!"

"Why are you calling _him_ 'dear'?!"

"Silence!" I clamped a hand over George's mouth and pointed to the counter with the other. "You made the mess, you clean the mess. And," I turned to George, "I could start calling you 'dear' if you so desperately want, but it makes me feel like eighty."

George wrinkled his eyebrows as I freed his mouth. "It does sound like we're grandparents, don't it?" I nodded. "Call him dear. It suits him." He wrapped his arms around my waist and planted a firm kiss on the top of my head. "Your hair smells nice."

"New shampoo," I informed him. "Noticing doesn't get you out of cleaning that mess."

He let out a whimper and let me go. "But, Meeeeelllieee!"

"George. _Clean_. I'll get Angie."

"That only works on Fred. I'm dating _you_, not _Angie_."

I raised my eyebrows. "So, you're _not_ afraid of her? Cool, I'll just pop up and bring her down here, then."

George lunged for my arm. "No, nonono, that's fine. Let the poor, sweet thing sleep. She's had a tough day. What with the…sun rising…and…the sky being blue, and all, it's been trying on her, hasn't it?" He grinned dramatically at me, and I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing at the success of my plan. "Fred's just about to clean the counter now. Nothing to worry about."

"WHAT?!" Fred exclaimed. "That's not…I never…ach." My love's twin deflated at George's sharp look. "Yeah, sure, you know me. I just love cleaning counters."

This return to normalcy in the past few weeks made my heart swell. Where I once felt like a waif, floating on the periphery, separated from the family by things I Knew and things I'd done, I slipped back in with a sense of belonging that hit me with more force than ever before. In the dark of night, George would curl an arm around me and murmur that he loved me, and I could really feel it. I found myself sleeping until morning on a near regular basis, save the few nights that my bladder prevented it.

Of course, the calm could never last, and we found ourselves once again rushing into an emergency one night not too distantly after the sticky counter situation. Ron, it seemed, knew how to ruin lives finally set at ease.

That's not fair at all. I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't even think that.

It is true, though.

I have to admit, I found his survival odd. Fortunate! Rowena, of course it was fortunate that Harry was there and grabbed the bezoar and knew what to do. But, see, that was were things got a bit fishy. Harry Potter was good. Oh, he was _very _good. I'd spent enough time in Dumbledore's Army to know that Harry Potter was full of surprises. It's just that, well, a bezoar wasn't exactly a surprise he should have.

"Bezoars aren't _taught_ at Hogwarts, don't you see? How could he know what to do with one? How could he know?"

George, of course, find my rumination late that night irritating, but he dutifully wrapped his arms around my waist, rested his chin on the top of my head, and pulled my back against his chest. The fire crackled in front of us, illuminating the living room that Fred and Angie abandoned hours ago after a trying day of dealing with a panicked Weasley clan. "Love, can we just be thankful that Ron survived?"

"Of course I'm thankful! I just want to know _why_. Something's going on here, George, and it's worth looking at further."

"It's not," he murmured, planting a soft kiss on the soft spot just below my ear. "Ron's alive. Harry's alive. We're alive. _Everybody's_ alive. And it's ridiculously late, so we should go to bed."

"George, I don't want to go to bed. I want to figure this out."

He squeezed his eyes shut and momentarily tightened his grip on me. The moment passed quickly, and, though forced, let out, "Mellie, you're not going to figure anything out at three in the morning. Could we please go to bed?"

"You can go if you want." Though, I really hoped he didn't. His warmth felt safe around me, and I could already imagine the loneliness swallowing me if he left. "I have too much to think about." And I did. I had quite a lot. A lot more than bezoars and poisoned mead, now that I had my thinking cap on.

George huffed. "So, Harry read about bezoars when he tried to figure out how to stay underwater during the Triwizard, or Hermione started blathering about them one day, or Snape drawled about them as some sort of insult to antidotes, or any number of ridiculous things. Now, can we _please_ go to bed?"

"Why did you come back?"

George made a face at me. "Erm, I live here? This is my shop. Remember me? I'm your boyfriend, been mates since we were ten, loads better than that clod that copied my face?"

I rolled my eyes and vowed to one day stop blurting out questions and assuming everyone would just automatically follow my train of thought. "No, I mean back to me. After…well…" I shifted uncomfortably in his loosened grip and kneaded my hands together. "After what I did."

"Oh, Mellie," he breathed, pulling me back to him tightly. I squirmed to get away, but he bumped his noise against my temple, making it rude to keep trying to pull away when he was obviously trying to keep me there. "Do we have to talk about this right now?"

"Well, we can't talk about the bezoar anymore." Because that was clearly the logical compromise…

I could just imagine him rolling his eyes at me. "Honestly?" I nodded and craned my neck to see his face, eyes lit by the flickering flames. "I don't know. Fred posted me about your mum and all I could think about was what you were going through on your own." He licked his lips. "And how you're crap on your own. You can't be on your own, Mel. I don't want you to be on your own, that's the last thing I'd ever want, but then I'd gone and left you that way right when you most needed me. And, yeah, it hurt like hell and doesn't make sense to me, but…" He shook his head. "I love you. You needed me, and I love you, so I came back."

"Do you forgive me?"

He hesitated, and I was sure in that instant that he did not. We were doomed. We could never overcome this. I had ruined us forever.

"Y'know, for some reason, I do. I shouldn't, and I know I shouldn't, but I do." He wrinkled his nose and looked away from me, eyes wide as he sorted through thoughts he probably hadn't considered as much as he should have. Men. "Why do I forgive you?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. If roles were reversed, I would forgive you, if it helps any."

He nodded slightly. "It does. If roles were reversed, I wouldn't have been able to slip a potion into your tea, though. What did you slip into my tea exactly?"

"Something I came up with. I got rid of the recipe, can't make it again."

The corner of his mouth curled up. "Thank you." He pressed his lips to my hair and held them there for a long minute. "That means a lot." He rested his cheek against my temple and sighed. "I guess I understand why you did it, too. It does make sense. It wasn't right, but I can understand why you would think of it after all you've been through."

"I'm not a charity case. I don't want a few battles to become an excuse for everything I do, George," I murmured to the flames.

"That's not what I'm saying," he yawned. "I just mean that I understand. I know that Mel two years ago wouldn't have done it, and Mel now wouldn't have, and Mel the next day might not have, either. It was in that moment, with everything going through your head and the stars aligned just so, that led to it. And if you can be patient with me when a failed experiment makes me grumpy, I can certainly be patient with you when something a bit bigger than that affects your decision-making. So, I forgive you, I don't hold it against you in any way, and I love you."

His arms tightened around me, and his lips found the soft skin below my ear. "Are you done worrying about this now?"

No. "Yeah."

"_Mellie_."

I chuckled. Oh, he knew me too well. "I just didn't think it was that simple."

"I don't see how it's simple at all."

* * *

**Am. SO. SORRY! I realize it's been almost a month since my last update, and that's ridiculously long even for me. Even though it doesn't make up for the wait at all, I assure you my focus on school has resulted in really good grades. Yay?...No? Yeah, I didn't think that'd be good enough. I'll tell ya' what. I've got a break coming up here, and I can use that time to write some. So, I can hopefully get another post up this weekend for you! I make no guarantees since I don't know my work schedule, but the next post will DEFINITELY be sooner. Thank you all SO MUCH for your lovely, lovely patience.**

_**Next chapter: Enchanted**_


	14. Enchanted

"I never could find it again," Fred shook his head sadly. "I always hated that. The place was impossible to navigate. I never even knew there was an East Tower until fourth year!"

"There…" George turned to me with a frown. "There wasn't an East Tower. Was there?" I shrugged. Hell if I knew.

"Ooooh, you know what else I hated about Hogwarts?" Angie announced, stabbing the air with her fork-skewered chicken. George, Fred, and I turned to her expectantly as we continued with our dinners. The heavy wind of an oncoming storm whooshed through the empty street outside our door. Clouds hung heavy in the air threatening, always threatening, to release their contents on us. Thunder rumbled in the distance, far enough away that there was a good distance between our home and the storm but close enough that I felt a shudder pass through me with every deep roll. I could ignore all of that, though, as we ate dinner together on the floor of the shop with a few candles lit around us for flickering light. "The stairs."

"Merlin, I hated that!" I agreed. "Nothing made me feel fatter than the first day back at school."

"No one is in the peak physical condition necessary to climb all those stairs!" Angie agreed emphatically. "If Oliver bloody Wood couldn't do it, how are we supposed to?"

"He was panting like a dog the whole first week. It's a wonder poor McGonagall didn't keel over one day," George added before shoving a forkful of rice into his mouth.

"I don't think the stairs were as bad as that bridge, though," I countered. "Anyone else worried it was going to cave out right under your feet?"

"ALL THE TIME!" Fred burst. "Any time there were more than four of us on it at once, and it would creak like that, like, _eeeaa-aaa-kkkk-ek-ekkkkk_, right?" We all nodded at the familiar noise, and George laughed at his brother's impression. "I was horrified."

"Know what I hated about Hogwarts?" George supplied.

"The Trifle Tuesdays they had our second year?" Angie offered. Fred wrinkled his nose at her, which made her giggle. A noise she never made quite that way before they got together, I noted.

"I hate that they _did away_ with Trifle Tuesdays. You know I like my trifle, Angelina," George answered matter-of-factly. "No, but I was saying I hated that there was no appreciation for magic there." Fred nodded emphatically – noteworthy that Angie had finally trained him not to talk with his mouth full – but I found that comment extremely confusing for the obvious reasons.

So did Angie. "Come again?"

"Think about it. All the stuff we learned was fine, but any experimentation and it was 'Mr. Weasley, my office, _NOW_!' and lines."

"That's because you two were being dunderheads. I experimented plenty and was just fine," I pointed out.

"You experiment with potions in a controlled environment," Fred countered.

"Snape was probably so surprised a student took interest in his class that he didn't' care what you did," George agreed.

"Besides, you were a Ravenclaw. Everyone knew 'Claws had it easy."

"Excuse me?" I took offense to that.

"How many times did one of your housemates botch an experiment or get caught past curfew and walk away with a warning?" Fred wrinkled his nose.

"Well, we were learning!"

"So were we," Fred shrugged. "And setting up future business opportunities! Yet we still had detentions."

George huffed and continued his brother's argument. "I enchanted a jewelry box to play music and, em –"

"Light up –" Fred supplied.

"Yeah, like sparkle –"

"For you, for Christmas, fourth –"

"Sixth year. Never got to give it to you. Filch took it."

"Still has it," Fred added.

Filch be damned. My heart swelled at the mere thought of the gesture. The boys continued blathering on, but I was done. They, or rather George, had silenced me even though I still had plenty of complaints about my dearly beloved Hogwarts. I stared at him with wide, adoring eyes and what I can only assume was an idiotic grin, hands clasped together on my lap, watching his lips form words I did not hear.

Angie must have noticed because she nudged Fred who then snickered, which attracted George's attention.

"Honestly, Mellie, it was two years ago," he chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"We weren't even dating then," I pointed out. Because it was clearly impossible to make sweet gestures to your friends…

"Mel, he made you a music box. I could buy you one of those," Angie teased.

"Oy, don't you ruin this for me," George growled.

"You made that for me!" I continued to gush like a schoolgirl, their banter completely ineffective.

George chuckled again and slung an arm over my shoulders. "I did."

"Hey, Mel, I've made you things, too!" Fred insisted. "Pay attention to me – _oof_!" He recoiled from Angie's elbow in his stomach.

"We're going for a walk," she announced.

"I'm not done eating," he whined. She gave him her world renowned glare, though, so he let out a resigned sigh and clambered to his feet. "Yay. I love walks. SO much."

"Don't lose him," George ordered. Angie flashed a thumbs-up and dragged Fred towards the door despite his protests that he needed a sweater. His complaints cut off sharply when the door swung shut, and George took the opportunity to pull me closer.

"He'll die out there," I decided. Our trips in adverse weather had shown me a thing or two about Fred stamina, and while he was excellent in the rain, he could complain like no other. If our enemies didn't use the storm to their advantage and attack (which I highly doubted would happen), Angie would kill him just to shut him up.

But George had fallen silent, finding no humor in my joke and not asking for any explanation to laugh along with me. I poked his side and frowned, and only then did he offer a shaky smile that I guess was supposed to reassure me that everything was fine. He knew me, though, and knew that it took a lot more than that to convince me everything was all right. Especially considering how quickly his mood shifted from happy to this, which was not sad but not angry, maybe nervous or anxious.

"I'm going to ask you something, and you're probably going to hit me because it's completely unplanned and not at all how you'd want this to go at all. But I really need to ask it right now, all right?"

I bit my lip and nodded. Rowena, he had me nervous, and I had to shift out from under his arm to better see his face. I just needed to see those eyes, to know that everything was still all right, and that added distance between us gave me enough of a view to really look at him. But I needed to hold him still, to feel that he was all there, so I kept a hand on his wrist that he quickly readjusted so he was holding with his own.

"What is it, George?"

"You really love me, right?"

"Of course I love you," I tittered nervously. Had we not gone through enough to prove that? "What is this about?"

"It's just that this, tonight, the laughing and the memories and the dinner…it made me think that I want to do this all the time. Every night. I want this to be our life all the time. And I know you think you're going to, well, y'know…" Die. But I didn't say it. We knew. "And you'll probably say no because you think it'll be some noble thing, and you're probably right, but maybe you're wrong about all of that. Even if you aren't, I want this, I want _you_. And I want you to marry me. Shit, no, that wasn't a question! Let me try again."

Merlin. I suspect there was not enough time for the shock to even register on my face before he made his second attempt at getting the wording right.

"So, yeah, I love you and…and will you marry me?"

Oh. Oh, Merlin. For some reason, my eyes welled up with tears that I could not even attempt to stop, and a glowing warmth spread across my chest. Something in the way George looked at me, all nerves and adoration and anticipation, just made me feel so loved. This was home, with takeaway boxes on the floor and candles burning to nubs and memories in the air and him right there, close enough to touch.

Considering everything, it was stupid and probably very dangerous, but I wanted all of this forever, too.

"Yes," I finally said, although I do not think George understood at first because nothing changed in his face. So, I said it again. "Yes, George. I want to marry you."

* * *

**It has been far too long since I've posted, and I'm sorry for that. I'll try to get things up quicker from now on. I honestly don't know what happened. Thank you all so much for your patience and for so loyally sticking with this even though the author of this story clearly has her head in the clouds! Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and see you in 2013!**

_**Next Chapter: Visitations and Interruptions**_


	15. Visitations and Interruptions

"Nothing like visiting the family, yeah?" Fred beamed, wrapping an arm around Angie. George and I were, unsurprisingly, less enthusiastic.

In our post-engagement bliss, it only briefly occurred to us that we would have to announce this news to the family. And, in the Weasley's current state of Bill and Fleur shenanigans, announcing another wedding would either be greeted with utter joy at the immense amount of time we wanted to leave to plan this thing or pure terror at the fact that another was on the way.

Either way, Mrs. Weasley would probably smother us.

Not that George and I particularly cared at that moment. Fred and Angelina were so busy acting out the various ways we were about to be humiliated – hugged to death, shunned, talked out of it, and/or laughed at – that they did not noticed we were no longer blissfully scared out of our wits. While they laughed by the floor, George and I stood in the corner, his hand gently rubbing my shoulders.

"Do you Know who?"

I shook my head. "Someone important."

"Remus? Moody?"

"I don't know, George!" I snapped, but the outburst did nothing to upset him. I suppose he expected it by now, and I was glad that his hand kept drawing circles across my upper back. It kept the ice water from washing through my veins. "Just someone. That's all I Know."

His free hand raked through his hair, and he puffed out a heavy breath as he surveyed his brother. "Let's not tell them."

My eyes flew wide open. "We have to tell them!"

"What?" He frowned at how my body tensed. "Oh! No, not about the…erm…"

Even the word was too much for him. He had been throwing "Voldemort" around as a school boy, but this was beyond him.

Well, it was not too much for me. Not anymore. "Death."

"Y-yeah. We tell Mum and Dad about that. Not…about…" He licked his lips and turned his eyes away from mind, gaze travelling down to where his fingers wove through mine.

"Us," I finished.

"Right. That can wait. One thing at a time."

I nodded solemnly. One thing at a time. What was more important now? The eminent death of someone important – of which I had only the vaguest, most useless details – or an engagement that would probably not result in a wedding any time soon?

The answer seemed pretty clear to us.

I sucked in air through my teeth and let it out in a quick whoosh. With one last shoulder-squeeze from George, I let out a falsely-cheery "Right, let's go," and followed the household into the floo.

When we stepped out of the fireplace, Molly Weasley sprang from her chair, teacup splattering to the floor. Angie began to apologize for startling her, but she breezed right by my dear friend to suck her sons in for the kind of airtight hug only a mother could give. Nervous energy radiated off of her, perplexing all of us as we exchanged glances. "We thought you'd gone!"

"Gone where?" Fred whined, squirming in her arms.

She frowned at me, confusion riddling her features, and let her boys go. I could see in her eyes that she assumed I Knew and took the boys racing into trouble; I half-wondered if we would have done exactly that if I had gotten more information from the strange Feeling that hit me while waiting for Angie to be done in the loo earlier. If it had been more than just a vague inclination that someone important had been hurt, probably killed, would we have gone rushing off as if four nineteen-year-olds could change anything?

Probably. She had a reason for thinking that, after all.

Department of Mysteries. Diagon Alley. We had accrued a record of dangerous behavior.

"Well, to Hogwarts, of course!"

Oh, no. Not there. Anywhere but there. George's eyes, wide and worried, told me he thought the same. If it happened at Hogwarts, there were only so many people it could be. None of them were good.

Mrs. Weasley took in our faces and understood that we truly had no idea what had happened. "You haven't heard? Oh. Oh, dear. Oh…" she looked over her shoulder for support that was not there for her; Arthur was poignantly missing. "Hogwarts…oh, no." She looked at the ceiling and put a hand over her eyes to steady herself. "Hogwarts was attacked. Dum-Dumbledore was killed."

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG

Fred glanced at me out of the corner of his eye for the third time since he started that cup of tea. I ignored him once again, watching out the window as George stared at the sky in hopes that Mr. Weasley would appear there on his way back from this mess. Angie sat in the kitchen with Molly, waiting for something, anything, any sign that no one else was harmed. Other than the message through one of the portraits just before we arrived, there had been no word of what was happening at Hogwarts.

The floo sat empty, waiting hopefully for someone to whizz through where we had come only a few short hours ago. George kicked the ground and raked both hands through his hair outside. Fred glanced at me again.

"I didn't Know about Dumbledore."

"I know."

"Well then, in Merlin's name, stop looking at me like that," I grumbled. I glanced at Molly's clock, which determined every member of the family to be in mortal peril.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I was just wondering what you and George are going to do now."

"Nothing, I s'pose."

Fred snorted. "Well, you can't do _that_. You have to get married at some point. I've already got your present picked out."

I cracked a smile. "I'm sure you do."

"You bet your ass I do. When are you going to tell everyone?"

"I don't know, Fred. When would you tell them?"

He shook his head and looked back at the floo. "I don't know if I could."

"How do you think we feel?"

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG

No one else seemed to be crying.

How could that be, no one else crying? How was I the only member of the Order of the Phoenix with tears blurring her vision, shoulders shaking from the uncontrollable waterfall? All around me, my brothers-in-arms were stoic, stone-faced, hardened, impenetrable walls giving no window to the emotions within. How? How could they hide the fact that our hearts were as broken as the shell of a man inside that tomb?

We tried to slip in at the back, sitting in an empty row amongst the students. After all, we were barely more than students ourselves, the four of us. I belonged two rows behind Bradley and Chambers, still attached at the hip. We were nineteen years old. Nineteen bloody years old. No older than them.

Before we could settle in, though, Professors McGonagall and Flitwick appeared at the end of our row. Their sudden appearance startled Seamus Finnegan and the heartbreaking lovely girl next to him that Ron used to date, but the house heads were not there for them. They were there for us. With a sharp clearing of her throat, McGonagall looked rather pointedly farther up in the seating.

_You belong up there_.

I had no idea how many of us there were. Tonks and Remus, sitting together as we all knew they would. Alastor Moody. Kingsley. Arabella Figg. From what I could tell, we were all there. And the entire Weasley Clan, too, from my quick glance, with four empty seats to the right of Fleur. I took the one next to her, since I could tolerate her the best of all of us.

Few faces were familiar. Albus Dumbledore touched so many lives that, despite the obvious mass of students I was only a year removed from, precious others stood out. The Snack Cart lady from the Hogwarts Express. Madam Malkin. Umbridge. Just pricks of familiarity in a sea of unknown.

The music and the words, so clear from where we sat, only made it worse. He was gone. Silence could convey that just as well, and perhaps not as painfully. I did not need the mournful song or the words that could never truly capture the wonder of this man. The wizard with the glittering grin and wise eyes and shameless sweet tooth.

I buried my face in George's shoulder and cried. He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed as tightly as he could, as if he thought he could absorb my body-wracking sobs and make the pain go away. I wished so desperately for it to be that simple. Nothing ever would be that simple again, though. Not for me. I felt a tear splash against my exposed shoulder, and another sob trembled through me. George was crying, too, crying silently and stoically so as not to disturb me. He was letting me grieve as openly as I needed without worrying about him. It made me feel selfish. It made me wonder if he knew how much I was really crying for.

We were not just gathered to bury the greatest man I would ever have the privilege to meet. Dumbledore's death was only part of what was being entombed that day. With him, so many other things had died. Innocence, safety, freedom, childhood, peace. I mourned them all. The world as we knew it was gone; it plummeted from the astronomy tower with my headmaster. There would be no more joyous, frivolous nights crafting new pranks and making up stupid songs and reminiscing about what idiots we had been in our younger days. The hardships we had only imagined would be knocking at our doors, and we would have to face them whether we were ready or not.

Dumbledore was dead.

We were at war.

* * *

**I. Am. So. Sorry. I never intended to go three months without posting, but as life got hectic, this chapter got pushed to the wayside. I just…I don't even know. I am truly so so sorry for making you wait so ridiculously long. The next couple posts are already outlined and I'm at a quiet point in the semester, so posts will NOT take three freaking months again. **

**Ahhhh. You guys are the best for putting up with me. The best. Hugs all around. You are beautiful, wonderful, and, not to metion, amazingly patient!**

_**Next Chapter: IPA and Lucky Strikes**_


	16. IPA and Lucky Strikes

Odd that the thing most likely to actually kill me was the one habit I could never quite shake. Angie and I were mostly "Boozy Faggers", as our particular circle of Knowle St. Giles miscreants branded ourselves when alcohol and cigarettes were just far enough from our grasps to be considered cool. We only ever smoked when we were drunk, or at least drunk enough to think inhaling toxic chemicals was cool.

And, oh, did it ever make us feel cool. It was the closest thing to intrigue we could muster in our little patch of the muggle world, a forbidden fag or two after several highly illegal pints of some cheap muggle beer. Those nights in back alleys with too many bottles and paper cartons and the nagging reminder that we could never really relate to these kids drinking and smoking with us were the closest to rebellion I ever got in my teenage years. I loved the burning liquid guzzling down my throat, the choking smoke filling my lungs, the burdens of the rest of the world leaving my shoulders to focus on the current focus that I could very well die in this particular moment and, if I did, that would not be such a terrible thing.

So, when Angie appeared in the closed shop with her arms full of plain paper bags, I knew immediately what was in them.

The boys joined us for a while, but neither Fred nor George had much of a taste for the muggle stuff. Firewhiskey was more their thing. Now, the wizard brands were fine now and then, but hard times called for drastic measures, and Angie did not spend her money on their tastes. After all, this was not for them. In times like this, when the night seem particularly dark and the fire offered no warmth, no solace to the unnatural silence filling the void around us, they turned to each other, as did Angie and I. I loved George. She loved Fred. But tonight, I needed her like George needed Fred. I needed the bottles of IPA she pulled out of those bags, remembering how this was the real stuff, the stuff that hit us the hardest in our tender teenage years.

_Tender teenage years_. We were only nineteen now.

Eventually, Fred and George left, and we told them not to wait up. Something told me they would stay awake that night anyway, just as I knew it would take all of that IPA to get me to sleep. I felt exhausted, weariness settled deep in my bones that even sleep would not extinguish, but too many thoughts crept into my mind to allow me to rest.

A bottle or two after they were gone, Angie dug them out. I had not seen a pack of Lucky Strikes in years, but the sleek white package with the red circular logo seemed as familiar as if I had just held one in my hand that morning. Oh, _that morning_, when I had forgotten this all had happened and spent a few precious moments relishing in the engagement.

The engagement. Ruined now. How could we tell them such happy news after this? After the greatest man any of us would ever know had been killed? Killed by someone we all trusted so much?

"Gimme on'a those," I demanded, holding my hand out expectantly. Angie obligingly tapped out a Lucky Strike and passed it to me. She pulled out her wand to light it, but I flicked my finger towards it instead. Through the growing fog of IPA in my head, my conjuration missed and nearly set our bags on fire, although the flames thankfully extinguished in the air. "Oops," I mumbled, trying again with much greater success. My poor aim did not worry Angie in the slightest, and she leaned forward while pushing her hair back for me to light hers.

We both took long, slow puffs. I always had a fondness for the American brands, although Lucky Strikes fell in the strange territory between American and British. They were owned by a British Tobacco company, if I remembered correctly. Although, considering how much IPA I had in my system at the time, I do not see how I could remember much correctly. Still, the brands made for Americans always seemed that hair stronger, fuller, more vibrant.

Sober, I hated the suffocating feeling of smoke filling the top half of my torso. With alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, though, I thrived off of it. Angie did, too, and she let the smoke out in a long, slow stream towards the ceiling. I did the same, leaning back on my elbow and feeling so very, very small among the towering shelves and massive displays of our store.

"Y'know wh'I think?" Angie slurred. I took another drag and looked at her. "I think 'iss way more com-comp'ica'ed than we realize." She nodded as if she found great pride in deducing this. "What you think?"

"I dunno what to think," I murmured, finding solace in reaching the bottom of my bottle. She slid another at me, and I popped the cap off with a wave of my hand. It made my head throb like when I first learned to use wordless, wandless magic to do so in such a state, but I found that I relished in the pain. Something to show I could still feel, I suppose. "I always trusted Snape."

"I never liked 'im. Greasy. But you did. An' if _you _liked sum'un," she pointed unsteadily at me, "_I_ liked 'em."

I snorted. "Tha's sweet, Ang. Thanks."

"Think this is all part of some big ol' plan? That Dum, Dumbsey, Dumbleydore had this all worked out?"

No way. He had to know what his death would do to us all. No bigger blow could be served to our side. No plan could be so big that he had to let himself get killed. What could be worth that? None of us were as powerful as him. We did not strike fear in Voldemort like him. He was the best chance we had, and he died. He would not voluntarily die, not without telling us. There was no plan, no sacrifice. As much as I wanted to dream this was a step towards a much bigger victory, it could not possibly be. The facts were simple. Dumbledore died. Snape broke the stalemate. We were losing. How could I possibly say that, though? How could I say that he made a mistake and put his trust in the wrong man?

Turns out, I did not have to find the words. My silence said enough, and Angie sighed wearily. "I don't, either."

Silence settled then, with nothing but the occasional crackle of a dying ember to interrupt the quiet. I lit another cigarette when mine grew too short. Angie stamped hers out to enjoy another beer. She always preferred to keep her beers and fags separate but related while I smoked and drank interchangeably – a puff here, a swig there, another puff, another swig. Different styles, same result. Drunker, sadder, one step closer to dead and one step farther from caring.

I do not know what time it was when the boys came crashing down the stairs. We were nearly done with the pack of Lucky Strikes and were splitting the very last bottle of IPA, so I assume it was fairly late. Late enough that the panic in their eyes was comical. Hilarious. Angie started laughing first, sputtering and nearly spilling the beer she tried to drink. That was what truly made me laugh, which then made me choke on my puff, which made Angie laugh harder, which made me laugh harder, which only confused the poor lads even more.

"What in Merlin's name are you two doing?!" Fred burst.

"We smelled a fire," George added.

"A-a f-f-f-ire!" Angie snorted. "Tha's no fire."

I grabbed the pack and held it up, but it did no good. Smoking was a muggle habit; the boys had no idea what the gesture meant. They knew what our flushed faces and the empty bottles around us meant, though, and pushed bottles and bags away from us in case this mysterious fire-smell could be dangerous to the two drunk girls. If only they understood that this was the least dangerous thing there was. Booze and fags could hardly do us any harm considering what was out there.

"Ya' smoke 'em," I explained. To demonstrate, Angie tapped one out, put it to her lips, thought better of it, took a swig of IPA, put the Lucky Strike back to her lips for me to light, and did a quick inhale and exhale, making sure to blow the smoke directly in Fred's face. To balance things out, when I took my next puff, I aimed it at George. Their wrinkled noses and slight gags made us giggle like the schoolgirls we used to be.

"Try," Angie ordered, passing hers off on Fred so she could drink more. I handed mine to George. "Put jus' the end in yer mouth, yeah? Good, right, tha's good. Then, inhale."

There was an art to smoking that Angie and I learned in those alleys with Harold Mitford and Paisley Hanover and Georgiana Austen. Inhale steadily. Hold it to really let the nicotine sink into you, spread through your bloodstream, impact every bit of you. Exhale dramatically in a steady, even stream to seem as cool as possible.

In her state, Angie could not even begin to explain that to them. She only just remembered to tell them "Shallow breaths!" after they started choking on their deep inhalations. Oops. Funny, though. I snorted into our last bottle of IPA, took my sip, and passed it over to them. The drink made them gag, but it helped them regain a bit of their breath.

"Why would you want to do that?" George gasped as he passed the cigarette back to me. I shrugged and took another drag.

"Feels good," Angie said.

"Feels like dying!" Fred corrected.

They were all gone now. The Hanovers were moving from Knowle St. Giles to Wales of all places. The Mitfords were still there, but the illustrious Harold had struck out on his own after finishing Harrow, living somewhere in London trying to make a name for himself. Georgiana died when the Millenium Bridge collapsed into the Thames. An innocent victim of our war.

"No, it doesn't," I corrected. "It feels like living. It feels like pain an' fire an' jus' a bit of fear. Y'don't get more alive than that."

Maybe it was what I said, or maybe it was how bitter it sounded, but the room once again fell silent after that. George had some more IPA. Fred tried the Lucky Strike again. Still hated it. Angie took it from him and stamped it out on the floor.

And maybe it did feel just a bit like dying. Maybe that was the point.

"Change your clothes before you go to bed," Fred requested when he and George stood to retreat back upstairs. I imagine they were using this feeling, this sense of utter emptiness, to be much more productive. Making a new product or something that could protect us. Angie nodded soberly.

George did not give me any such order.

Just before they took to the stairs, I felt the indescribably strong urge to tell George, "I love you." It stopped all three of them. When George turned to me, I could have sworn his eyes had just a bit of a shine to them, although that could have been because I suddenly felt like the entire world was going to shit and I needed to curl into a corner and bawl about it.

Drinking always eventually made me emotional.

That did not feel like enough. I did not think he understood just how much I loved him. How deeply and uncontrollably I needed him with every fiber of my being. So I told him again, this time significantly louder. "I really fucking love you, Goerge."

"I-I love you, too, Mellie."

"I mean, I really love you."

"Aw, Mellie." He walked towards me, and I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could. That ended up being a terrible idea because my head throbbed painfully from the alcohol and the magic and the Lucky Strikes. But George caught me, as George always did, easing my fall. Instead of pulling me up, though, he eased me to the ground, falling with me. He held me close, pulling my head to his chest so the IPA and the Death and the Knowledge and the Lucky Strikes could pour from my eyes to ruin his robes.

Somewhere in this, Fred sat with Angie (or maybe she pulled him down – hard to say) into a crushing hug.

The four of us stayed that way until morning, clinging to each other until the first rays of the sun made stomachs churn and heads throb and lives seam just as bleak.

* * *

_**Next Chapter:**_** Something Borrowed, Something Blue**


	17. Something Borrowed, Something Blue

The last time that I saw my mother's house, evil thickened the air until I could barely breathe. Ghosts peered out of windows and ran in front of my path, bitter memories playing out on the walls and in silence between words.

This day, the house glimmered in the summer sunlight as a crisp, white beacon on the otherwise bleary street at such an early hour of the morning. Red flowers bloomed at the bottom of the steps, although I swore they had never been there before. The swinging chair had been repainted, a fresh grapevine wreath hung on the door, and a vase of cheerful daisies placed in the window to make the place ready for potential buyers.

Angie looped her arm through mine. "Ready to go in?"

I could still feel it around us. Something flickered in the corner of my eye or tickled the back of my neck or flashed in the window. Something wrong. Something heavy and thick and dark and wrong. But only a flashes. Only the slightest inklings that something terrible had ever happened here.

"Ready."

Angie, George, and Fred (and a variety of others, I would later discover) had worked far too hard or spent far too much money fixing the place up. The furniture and floors had all been cleaned, walls repainted, and smaller items packed away somewhere – since I had maintained over the months that I wanted none of it, Rowena only knew what they did with Mum's vases and books and coasters and whatnots. The kitchen set had been completely replaced, making the room barely recognizable with all the shiny new appliances. I still chose not to go in. We had other things to do, after all.

I snagged Angie's elbow and practically dragged her up the stairs, the pair of us giggling like pigtailed girls as we stumbled over our own feet in our excitement. Angie wrestled out of my grasp at the top forced me away from our target to explain the plans she had for my old room – fresh beige paint, quilt I never used spread across the bed to make it look homey, curtain rods replaced, and old toys packed away – the next free weekend she had.

"It'll be like I was never here," I confirmed. She grinned.

"That's what I want. No signs of your mess."

"My mess is wonderful," I countered.

"Your mess is a pain in my ass," she corrected. I rolled my eyes and cuffed the back of her head, bringing a fresh round of giggles to us both. It was time to get down to business, so I slid out of my old bedroom and down the hall only to be hip-checked out of the way by my much-too-violent friend.

Angie blocked the door with her body, hands behind her back to grasp the doorknob. "We didn't get to clean out the bedrooms yet. It might be a little bit…well…much."

I rolled my eyes. "Isn't that why we came here? Because things weren't packed up yet?"

She cocked her head to the side. "True. In we go." With that, she turned the knob and pushed the door open.

There it was in exactly its former state, untouched by the months and the tragedies and the loss. My mother's bedroom. While my room had been mostly barren, belongings packed up years ago when I went to Hogwarts for the first time (the last few items shoved in a trunk when I moved in with Fred and George), this one was as full as if someone would be sleeping in it tonight. Everything looked exactly the same from the hospital corners on the bed to the framed abstract art on the wall. Here, time stood remarkably still.

"How are you doing?" Angie asked as I stood immobile in the doorway.

My head throbbed from memories battling to the forefront of my mind – images of my girlhood face grinning in the mirror, my mother's hands braiding my unruly locks, and trying on her jewelry when I knew she was preoccupied swimming to the surface in mismatched orders. My stomach tightened at the familiar sight of bright sunlight spilling onto her dark green comforter (Slytherin colors for my father).

There was so much about her I never took the time to understand, but I saw plainly then what I could never grasp when she was alive. If I lost George that day, I would fight until everyone even remotely responsible paid for it. In five years though, or ten? With a young child that ate dirt and fell down every fifth step and hated vegetables? I would protect. Fiercely. Like she did.

"I'm all right."

The jewelry box still rested on the vanity like in my childhood, and I began sifting through its contents before she could push further. Too gaudy. Too gold. Too long. Too…eugh.

"That looks old." Angie pointed to the tarnished bronze owl charm.

"I'm wearing the charm bracelet Fred gave me seventh year." I shook my wrist so she could see hos prominently silver it was.

"Oh. Pearls, then?" She fingered the short necklace gingerly. The suggestion gave me pause. I thought of my dress: Simple, ivory, straight to the floor, lace around the sweetheart neckline, capped sleeves.

"Pearls," I agreed. She clasped the beads around my neck with a "Something old."

"Dress is new," I added, ticking off the imaginary list in the air.

"Ravenclaw brooch is blue."

"I need to borrow something," I murmured as my reflection ran its hands over my mother's necklace.

"I'll loan you a flask, but I want it back as soon as 'you may kiss the bride' is deal with."

This required consideration. "Anything in it?"

After a moment of fishing, she procured the Hog's Heads finest souvenir from her bag and shook it for full sloshing effect.

"Deal." I snatched at it and took a swig so the firewhiskey could refreshingly burn my throat and nose. A surprising choice in drinks, but part of my wondered of the flask was even originally intended for her or if a certain redheaded best man would be sorely disappointed at being left out. "What do you think the boys are doing right now?"

"Last I saw, they were trying to figure out which suit was whose. I don't know who's the bigger mess today – Fred or George."

"Imagine what it'll be like on your day."

Angie hummed what may or may not have been appreciation over my comment. Carefully, she scooped up a fistful of my hair, gave it a few twists, and secured it with my mother's pearl-tipped hairpin.

"There," she smiled softly, "now George can see your eyes." Warmth spread through my chest at the implication. She patted my hair like my mother used to do and added, "You are getting married, Mel."

"I am," I breathed, although the words did not help the moment feel any less surreal.

Maybe it would be easier for Fleur to comprehend this moment when her time came – after all the planning and fussing and preparation, marriage could not be avoided. For me, though? To wake up one morning and be asked if I wanted to get married that weekend – no fuss, no ceremony, just a muggle license that our enemies would never think to look for – left only days to comprehend. Now the moment arrived, and it felt like someone else's day. Surely, I watched through one-way glass as another girl did this.

"It doesn't feel real."

"That's just because you're essentially married already just without the documentation. It's all a formality at this point."

Oh. Of course. Angie had quite a knack for putting things into perspective. I married George a long time ago. After all, what was a wedding besides formally declaring your intent to spend your lives together? We just needed to sign some paperwork to do that. I made the actual decision years ago, back at 11 years old on Platform 9 ¾, although I had no clue at the time that the moment was more than a chance collision. And I loved him since…since…

Since the first time he grabbed my hand to drag me off somewhere. Since he told Kenneth Towler off for hurling insults at the Ravenclaw Quidditch team for killing time with the Slytherin team as we handed the pitch to them after try-outs our second year. Since the day he listened to my rant about how unfair it was for wizards to ignore the miracle that is the electric kettle (all that magic, but I still have to wait for the stove to heat up!). Since the time he cried, honestly cried, over a fight with Fred. Since he stayed up all night to just hold me and make sure I was not alone even though Cedric was dead and Voldemort was back and everything was different.

"You all right?" Angie asked, procuring the dress for me to change into.

"Think you will marry Fred one day?"

"Oh, probably." She pursed her lips at a wrinkle. "His mum'd make us, wouldn't she?"

"If she didn't, though?"

"I don't know. I can't think about things like that right now, not with…everything. What you and George are doing? It's beautiful and I understand; you two need to do this exactly how you are. That just isn't me or Fred. When everything clears up maybe. We'll see."

_Clears up_. Like the war was a pile of dirty dishes no one had the strength to wash. How British.

"Have you two talked about it?"

"Loads," she confirmed. "We're just not keen on doing it because of the war. We want to be sure any decisions like that are on our terms, not theirs."

"Do you think George and I are rushing this?" Maybe we were letting Dumbledore's death taint our decision…

Angie snorted as she zipped up my dress. "I don't think anything about you two can be described as rushed, luv."

"I could say the same to you."

"Fred and I find more pleasure taking it slow, and, yes, I mean that as a euphemism."

Ew. _Ew_. "I hate you."

"You're beautiful. Let's go get you married."

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFG

At age 15, I went with Angie to her cousin's wedding. It was a huge muggle affair with over a hundred people in attendance. We packed into the church, hair coifed and perfume sprayed to overpower our pewmates' conflicting scents. Someone carefully arranged bouquets in every corner and on every available table in the reception hall, where we feasted on oversauced food and sickly sweet cake while bad music swirled softly through the room. Girls lost their heels as they danced to Aqua with boys they barely knew. Children snickered at how the groom willingly wrapped his arms around the bride's waist when _My Heart Will Go On_ began.

As the only wedding I ever attended, I always assumed all ceremonies stuck to that formula and figured that my wedding day would be similarly abysmal.

I was wrong.

It was a simple ceremony, nothing like the elaborate celebration I once attended or the one coming in a few long weeks for Bill and Fleur. No feast, no songs, no dreadful music. Just two witnesses and a muggle man with a pen and paper that held infinite power. It felt very official and, most importantly, very private. No one needed to know about this. Not right now, anyway.

I did not need a big ceremony or that huge extended family gawking while my relatives were distinctly absent by no choice of their own. At the end of the day, I just needed that official document stating that I was married to this man, the one that stared at me with the full depth of his being, the one that thought I was the only person in the room.

A quiet conversation with Kingsley in the coming days would get the documentation taken care of with the Ministry.

George wrapped a possessive arm around me as he and his brother argued over where we should get dinner. Dinner. Wedding dinner. My first dinner as a married woman. Angie and I giggled over that. Fred told embarrassing stories about George's school crush on me. Angie told embarrassing stories about how oblivious I had been towards his feelings. We laughed over shared adventures and Quidditch rivalries; George laced his fingers through mine and did not let go until I needed the hand to eat.

For one day, one blessed day, we were four normal young adults. No war. No death. Just a wedding.

* * *

**As always, thank you guys so much for reading. I know updates are slow, but how you all stick with this story means the world to me. I love reading your reviews and getting your feedback. Thank you!**

_**Next Chapter: Flight Planning**_


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